A recap from GridFWD 2024 by Tom Brim, AVP and Brett Lyon, Manager in North Highland Consulting’s utility practice
How far we have come.
Just think, for those of us at the GridFWD 2023, many ohh’ed and ahh’ed with great curiosity as Microsoft demonstrated the power of its AI engine during a morning keynote at Skamania Lodge in Stevenson, WA. Turn the clock forward one year, and AI is the “unavoidable fact” of the electric grid. We are no longer in the era of sub-1% ho-hum load growth era. With an AI search taking 10 times the computing power of a traditional Google search, we are seeing AI and data centers load growth that is expected to more than double from 2022 to 2026 according to the IEA.
At GridFWD 2024, in Banff, Alberta we saw that utilities are starting to jump in. They are working up their own AI use cases to modernize the grid without compromising grid reliability.
Just what are we seeing utilities do?
Current AI Use Cases for the Grid
Shiv Kumar, VP of Operations, Asset and Grid Modernization at Alberta utility ENMAX laid out five use cases his team is working on. One that struck home for many given the devastating wildfires we have seen in the West is the use of drones to capture images around transmission lines and using AI to analyze and create prioritized work orders for vegetation management or system upgrades. ENMAX has also created AI chatbots for system operators and field teams to ask questions about detailed procedures and get quick responses, as well as a AI/Machine Learning driven data repository and extraction platform.
Photo (L to R): Marissa Hummon, CTO of Utilidata moderates panel with AI thought leaders: Marie Steele , VP of Integrated Energy Systems at NV Energy; Shawntia McNeil, Global Energy Ecosystem Partner Manager at Nvidia; Joe Glazer, Director – NPX at Hubbell.
Shantia McNeil of NVIDIA shared valuable AI use cases that she is seeing such as predictive maintenance, infrastructure management, load forecasting, and DER integration. “We not only want to unlock growth and drive efficiency, but we need to create a more future proof sustainable and resilient grid,” noted McNeil.
In their session titled “AI, DERs and FERC 2222: How might it all come together?” Astrid Atkinson, CEO of Camus Energy, joined Alexina Jackson, VP of Strategic Development at AES, to discuss how machine learning focused data analysis, which they referred to as “Small AI”, was used to analyze the impact of EV adoption on the AES Indiana distribution grid to inform strategic allocation of utility capital. The results are discussed in their recently released white paper.
Matt Futch, Managing Director of Black & Veatch, presented with Harneet Panesar, COO of the Ontario Energy Board (OEB). Harneet provided a regulator’s perspective. To equip stakeholders with more efficient tools for searching the OEB’s adjudicative documents, the OEB is launching iSearch, an AI-powered search engine and document analysis tool. Replacing the OEB’s existing database, iSearch will provide access to over 170,000 documents for enhanced search and analysis, supporting the OEB’s digital-first approach.
Harneet Panesar (OEB) shares the role of the regulator in an AI future with utility leaders at GridFWD 2024.
Five Early AI Lessons for Utilities
The AI leaders at GridFWD 2024 cautioned utilities to be thoughtful about crafting AI, rather than chasing every use case. “Capital is too precious and the risks of doing it wrong are great,” said Alexina Jackson.
- Create a governance model first before jumping to use cases. Hanna Grene, Global GTM & Operations Leader for Energy of Microsoft, shared principles of responsible AI that her team shares with its 500+ energy clients: Accountability, Privacy & Security, Inclusiveness, Transparency, Reliability & Safety, and Fairness.
- Educate your workforce, from top to bottom. We are seeing a tremendous need to train employees about AI – the technology, uses, and ways it will enhance their work. Operators who run the grid, and do it well, may feel threatened by the AI tools or feel like it is a threat to their job.
- Need for standardization. Joe Glazer of Hubbell noted that there is a diverse ecosystem of end customer devices, aggregators, hardware companies, energy providers and markets that need to coordinate to leverage the full power of AI tools. “We need to standardize protocols and data schemes so that that devices can easily and effectively communicate with one another and with software suites. Without removing these barriers, devices (such as smart inverters) with unique protocols and software will require expensive backend integrations, or worse, will become stranded”, Glazer notes.
- Prioritize, prioritize. Take the time to go through the stack of AI ideas that are inevitably going to be generated, determine who will have access to AI, ensure the business case is in place, and evaluate the impact on customers and technical debt. This cannot be understated – AI has tremendous value, but the hype has the potential to create chaos.
- Be brave and adopt AI. Utilities by nature are conservative and hold reliability and security sacred, but the grid benefits are too great to not embrace AI.
“There is no doubt that the benefits of AI will transform the way the grid operates. Although it is not a silver bullet to all our challenges, it is a critical piece of the puzzle. The path of least risk for the industry is to invest in AI-ready infrastructure and determine how to leverage AI to achieve a clean and reliable energy transition,” says Marissa Hummon, CEO of Utilidata.
Grid Forward is excited to continue this conversation as we feature AI as its GridFWD 2025 conference theme.
