How to build AI products for the Energy Sector, by Fmr. Tesla PM
Credit: Siyi Zhang
“The grid as of today is a centralized one-way system. Power plants pump energy into the grid. The electricity is carried through the transmission and distribution lines. And then get consumed by homes and businesses.
The idea behind it is straightforward but profound; supply equals demand at all times.
If you don’t balance the supply and demand, the grid frequency will deviate and result in brownouts and blackouts, causing big damage to the economy and people’s well-being.
Matching supply and demand used to be manageable because everything is centralized and one-directional.
But with the rise of solar and wind, the grid is now flooded with intermittent renewable generations. How do we address this increasing mismatch of supply and demand when the grid is so dynamic and complex?
The answer is we need to deploy more flexible energy resources and manage them intelligently.
Flexible energy resources are any energy assets that can ramp up and down in terms of power production and consumption.
That’s why energy storage systems become a critical piece in this energy transition puzzle. It basically charges when there is oversupply and discharges when there is over-demand. Then, it simply absorbs that supply-demand imbalance and stabilizes the grid.
Unfortunately, dispatching those flexible energy resources like batteries is tricky and complicated. We are quickly reaching a point where humans cannot manage this rapidly evolving monolithic grid infrastructure with conventional methods.
So that’s a prime time for the energy industry to embrace AI adoption.
But what does AI really mean for the energy industry?
4 Dominant AI Applications in Energy
- AI for Energy Consumption
- AI for Virtual Power Plant
- AI for Electricity Trading
- AI for Grid IoT Operation & Maintenace” — Siyi Zhang
Source: Siyi Zhang — How to build AI products for the Energy Sector, by Fmr. Tesla PM
