Utility AI Insights: 2024 Report

A new technological age is underway in the power sector. Utilities, tasked with playing a leading role in how the economy decarbonizes, are increasingly looking for digital solutions to complicated problems.

The magnitude of complexity is staggering — manage an energy and technology transition while maintaining the imperative of resiliency, reliability, and affordability. But improved sector digital maturity, buoyed by the availability of multi-modal data, is helping to meet an uptick in weather events, distributed energy resource (DER) deployments, and evolving customer needs. Increasingly, sophisticated artificial intelligence solutions and software are advancing the energy transition.

AI isn’t new to utilities. Many have been working with load forecasting and other machine learning applications for some time. But the extent to which AI is being incorporated into grid systems has increased dramatically in recent years with the proliferation of cloud-based solutions, the drop in chips prices, and the evolution of utility digital programs.

Decades of investment in sensors, communications technology, and software has generated massive amounts of data for electric utilities. But much of it remains siloed or difficult to analyze. AI offers up a true inflection point across the sector. For prepared utilities, AI has the power to accelerate ongoing digitization efforts.

In this report we assess how the power sector is presently evaluating and adopting AI and explore the solutions that may impact its future. To paint this picture, this report examines both the supply side and the demand side of the Utility AI market. We interviewed multiple utility leaders and vendors and assembled numerous data sets to give unique insight into the space. This report ultimately serves as a temperature check, opportunity guide, and a capability forecast for a rapidly changing sector.

Have questions about this report?
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Table of Contents 

1. Introduction and Key Findings
2. Report Scope and Methodology
3. Understanding Utility Approaches to AI Adoption
4. Insights from Utility Interviews
5. Assessing the Vendor and Market Landscape
6. Use Cases and Vendor Approaches in Profile
7. Appendix‍

Want to join the conversation around the dual challenge and opportunity of AI in the power sector? Join Latitude Media for Transition-AI 2024, an all-day, in-person event on December 3rd in Washington, DC that will convene a broad range of experts around three urgent themes: reliability, customer analytics and experience, and load growth. Space is limited, so register now to secure your spot.