Artificial intelligence may have exploded in the public consciousness thanks to a new generation of attention-grabbing chatbots, but AI and machine learning have been with us for several years – and these more established models are already delivering significant returns.
Electricity grids and AI, for instance, are a match made in heaven. Grids are complicated, have vast numbers of inputs and outputs, require constant oversight and create huge quantities of data. Dealing with enormous numbers of variables and complex systems is one of the things AI does best – better, arguably, than pretending to be human.
Iberdrola, Europe’s largest utility company, which owns ScottishPower in the UK, has been using AI for more than 10 years to make predictions, optimise processes and detect patterns, which can be used to improve its operations. One example of this is providing customers with accurate estimates of outage times after incidents, via an app. Another is allowing engineers to plan ahead by telling them which grids or transformation centres will need partial replacements the following year, using myriad variables that predict possible issues based on historical data.
