FEW Organizes event Artificial Intelligence against the Future Challenges of Power and Utilities

Artificial Intelligence against the Future Challenges of Power and Utilities became the first event organized by Future Energy Week and brought together Digital and Technology Leads from the power & utilities companies.

Among the event’s speakers were representatives of such companies as Enel, Waterloo North Hydro, PA Consulting Group, NeedEnergy and AFRY Management Consulting. Enjoy insights and key quotes here:

“We are retrieving 40 million data loads concerning the way our renewable energy plants are operating, and we use it to optimize the way we operate our assets. From our customers we are retrieving around 26 billion measurements daily. We also have around 1.6 million interactions with our customers every day on average… If we compare the amount of data we produced in 2020 with that of 2010, last year we produced thirty times more data than what we had ten years ago”, says Giuseppe Amoroso, Head of Digital Strategy & Governance at Enel.

“Talking about the concept of microgrids, and also omni-directional electricity, so let’s if you have got an electric car or Tesla wall batteries and you don’t need what you have got, why don’t you just let your neighbour use it? What had to come down from a generation station, why don’t you put it back into the grid for profit? .... At a practical scale, that’s not a reality yet, but it is knocking at our door”, says Mark Dillon,  Vice President of Information Technology at Waterloo North Hydro.

“The Utilities sector in the coming years will change to become more distributed, way smarter and way more on the edge. And I have a strong feeling that Africa will lead in that regard, given that we have millions of people without access to power which means we have the biggest energy demand. So Africa will be the place where you will see the greatest innovations in the utility space”, says Leroy T Nyangani, Team Lead and a Co-founder at NeedEnergy.

"Digital infrastructure and software investments have already overtaken those of power generation itself in the energy sector globally, and in the coming years they will become even more important. Of course, AI is and will continue too be in the heart of those investments”, says Hajer Ben Charrada, Consultant at AFRY Management Consulting.

“Failures of cables and terminations almost always cause extended customer outages. Electric utilities have been trying to find solutions to predict these failures, but have yet to “crack the code”. There is a solution that points to these challenges”, says Gregg Edeson, Partner at PA Consulting Group.

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