Industry
Energy, Resources & Utilities
Rebalance the energy equation
Highlights
- The global energy transition endeavor is at a watershed moment. Generative AI is catalyzing the journey by promoting new utility roles and responsibilities.
- At the same time, generative AI keeps the lights on by enabling operational excellence.
- Three thumb rules can ensure the success of generative AI in the utilities sector.
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Energy transitioning
GenAI-fueled energy transition is a great enabler in charting the future course of utilities.
Energy transition focuses on identifying new utility roles and responsibilities with prosumers at the center, leading to new revenue sources. Meanwhile, there is a need to " keep the lights on” without compromising equity, sustainability, and reliability.
In this journey, utilities empower prosumers, manage intelligent infrastructure, simulate insights, and optimize the smart grid. They also deal with the trilemma of equity, sustainability, and reliability while emphasizing operations. In doing so, utilities need new capabilities like genAI that will bring opportunities at the convergence of industry boundaries and unlock efficiency in the intersection of flexibility, resiliency, and optimization.
According to the TCS AI for business study utilities report, 47% of utilities executives surveyed expect over half of their employees to be using genAI daily within the next three years.
Promoting new roles
Modern utilities today identify a host of new roles and responsibilities.
Affinity services around empowered consumers and smarter grid management by shifting focus from delivery to discovery are becoming a part of the utility blueprint. Infrastructure management in the energy-sharing economy and information modeling by leveraging the power of the ecosystem are also areas that are being explored.
GenAI acts as a catalyst in underlining many of these new roles and responsibilities of utilities:
- Affinity services for empowered prosumers:
Virtual power plants (VPP) or bring your own storage (BYOS) are a couple of instances where utilities can bring new sources of revenue to prosumers in exchange for energy from the prosumers themselves that can be used for stabilizing the grid or lowering the cost of power. However, before the prosumer enrolls in such programs, they need to understand the value proposition from the utility provider, the requirements, key benefits, and eligibility criteria.
- Dynamic grid management: The grid's role is changing from delivery to discovery, with a focus on flexibility and optimization. Emerging trends include the integration of renewables, security-constrained economic dispatch, scenario modeling for network visibility, and real-time limit management.
- Infrastructure management: A utility that manages EV charging stations must be able to advise EV users on the charging infrastructure based on their preferences, such as distance traveled, waiting time, charger type, and tariff.
A genAI-based solution can answer many of these prosumers’ or utilities’ questions with pertinent details.
Core operations
Three key focus areas are shaping utilities' core services in the energy transition era.
- Equity: In a globally volatile time, it is imperative to build a strategy on energy affordability and accessibility to a wide swath of humanity. GenAI can help consumers optimize their energy consumption and identify the right tariff based on their needs and persona, ensuring energy affordability. Similarly, genAI can simplify the user query management process for energy access by directly interacting with them over chatbots. Leaner moves like these enable providers and consumers to have easy access.
- Sustainability: To achieve net zero, utilities empower themselves by promoting new business models like demand side management (DSM), gamification, and electrification of mobility with the prosumer at the center. For example, for a DSM program, identifying the target customer profile, interventions, and incentives can be output from genAI.
- Reliability: A modern utility must ensure two Rs at the core of its operating model: reliability and resiliency. Reliability involves managing the probability and consequences of asset failure to ensure safe power delivery. Asset-heavy industries like utilities need to carefully manage extreme weather events like wildfires, bushfires, hurricanes, and cyberattacks, which call for building resilience across their value chain.
GenAI can also redefine an operator’s productivity by suggesting the optimum operational parameters for generating assets, predicting the demand or supply and asset health, and improving the health and safety of its personnel on the ground. GenAI also offers an educational platform where employees can connect to build domain knowledge.
Future of utilities
A plethora of new opportunities gives utilities a new dimension
The success of genAI in accelerating energy transition depends on three key factors:
- Utilities must use genAI in tandem with other disruptive technologies, such as IoT, smart metering, 5G, and blockchain, to maximize value. For example, IoT data generated from the wind turbine can be used along with genAI to suggest the optimum wind turbine blade angle.
- With the proliferation of genAI, utilities, and prosumers must fuse efficiency with experience to achieve a win-win situation. For example, utilities leveraging genAI must proactively advise prosumers on how their photovoltaic systems should be used to manage peak load and create new sources of revenue.
- Last but not least, the solution should be designed with humans in mind and promote positive habits in us, such as energy consumption optimization and EV charging habits, to mention a few. Humans complemented by genAI will be the competitive differentiators for utilities in the future.
In conclusion, genAI promotes both sides of energy transition: new roles and responsibilities and core operations of equity, sustainability, and reliability.
Maintaining the right balance and synergy of progress between these two priorities will determine genAI's triumph in driving the energy transition.
