Al Utilities Can Trust. Flexibility Utilities Can Own.
How electric companies are unlocking new value from their existing technology and data investments.
Facing unprecedented load growth, an aging grid, and growing affordability challenges, electric companies are being asked to achieve more with less. Customers and regulators expect continued reliability, smarter investments, and improved customer experiences—all while limiting rate hikes.
Electric company leaders are recognizing the only sustainable approach is to drive efficiency, extract value, and re-invest in existing investments. Thankfully, tools like software and Al present solutions to meet these needs.
The Power of Layered Technology
The secret to maximizing Al's value for electricity companies lies in combining two types of technology:
- Horizontal Al
- This is the broad, general-purpose technology, like global cloud services, big data platforms, and large language models from Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, and Amazon, that provides foundational processing power and tools used across all industries.
- Vertical Al
- These are highly specialized models built for specific industries. In the energy industry, this includes machine learning algorithms with expert knowledge on smart meter usage patterns to identify appliance and DER signatures, derive relevant consumer insights, and predict risks like wildfires or transformer failures.
By combining the strength of the general platforms with the specialized knowledge of vertical models, electric companies can enable industry-specific use cases that unlock grid flexibility, support distribution planning, and manage costs for customers through optimized rate design.
Achieving Real Returns from Al Investments
Successful Al initiatives start by defining a clear business goal, not by chasing a new technology. For example, to improve grid stability, grid planners need to know more than just total energy use. They need granular data that identifies the driving factors behind changes in load shape.
When Al is able to identify five EVs charging simultaneously on the same feeder, at the same time summertime air conditioning use spikes, grid planners can now target customers in these neighborhoods for incentivized load shifting programs.
Achieving measurable, scalable goals that clearly impact load, consumers, and the grid will drive wider adoption of new technology and create a virtuous cycle where efficiency lowers costs, maintains affordable rates, and generates public support.
Deploying Al Safely in the Energy Industry
To scale responsibly, innovation cannot be a "black box" that operates in isolation. With large electric companies often hesitant to send sensitive customer data, like AMI information, outside their secure environment, the solution is to deploy the advanced vertical Al models directly inside the electric company's own environment.
This strategy achieves two things:
- Security And Flexibility: Data remains secure and ensures the specialized tools work seamlessly with the electric company's existing investments in general platforms.
- Empowerment: Specialized models turn into an essential data asset that the electric company's own data scientists and engineers can use. This empowers them to quickly build new applications, rather than relying on an external vendor for every single use case.
Bridging the gap between broad digital infrastructure and energy-specific intelligence allows electric companies to maximize their existing data ecosystems, turning years of accumulated AMI data into a high-yield strategic asset.
Given the complexity and rapid evolution of AI, the Scaling AI in the Energy Industry episode of the Electric Perspectives podcast, featuring Arizona Public Service's (APS's) Michelle Ferrara, offers a deeper exploration into how APS is building an AI ecosystem to strategically support their technology investments. Learn more at bidgely.com/utilityai-pro.
