Utility Week

34 www.utilityweek.co.uk/fLeX A I A N D T H E S M A R T G R I D a real-world environment. However, these are major caveats," adds Richardson. e chief executive of Upside Energy, Devrim Celal, believes the availability of more "granular" – or detailed – data is necessary in order to prevent "issues before they happen". "You can understand how better to invest money into the right places, so you are building resilience in the right places. And when things fail, you can recover from those failures much quicker," he explains. "One of the projects we are looking at at the moment is collecting data from lots of different distributed energy resources – batteries, solar PV [photovoltaics], etc," he adds. "Each one of these assets would have a different way of behaving. If you start developing deep knowledge about their behaviour, you can monitor them and pick MAKING AI WHILE THE SUN SHINES Another example of how the sector is working to create a smarter grid can be seen in the recent announcement that EDF Energy and its technology partner Upside Energy have signed a deal to optimise a combined 16MW of solar and battery assets at Clayhill solar farm in Bedfordshire. Under the agreement, algorithms and artificial intelligence systems developed by Upside Energy will be used to analyse all aspects of the revenues available to the site and understand how to precisely optimise the assets to their full capability. "We see in the UK that there is an appetite for this kind of solution," explains EDF Energy's director of energy solutions, Vincent de Rul. "It is necessary from a strategic point of view, particularly when you want to push low-carbon solutions," he adds. "It also has the capability to bring back the stability of the grid and integrate more renewables on the grid." up any change in behaviour, as a means of identifying cyber threats early on." A q u e s t i o n o f c y b e r s e c u r i t y ere is no question that a more automated and smarter grid raises important questions around cyber security. e Boston Consulting Group and the World Economic Forum recently published a report on cyber resilience in the electricity ecosystem, which called on utility companies to take more preventative action to protect energy supplies. According to the Boston Consulting Group's head of cyber security practice, Walter Bohmayr, there are now "constant attacks" on power grids everywhere around the world. " ere are computer systems out there that do nothing else but frequently check the security of utilities and try to find vulnerabilities," Bohmayr explains. "Attackers try to send false signals to the AI-supported defence systems and lure them into the wrong directions. " ey can falsely train the defence mechanisms and then get an advantage, and then launch an attack which gets overlooked by the defence mechanism." But the chief executive and founder of smart hub firm Verv, Peter Davies, believes energy systems are no more at risk than other sectors. "If I was a hacker I would far rather go after the banks than the energy companies," says Davies. " e key thing with the grid is always security of supply. e consumer wants to know that electricity will constantly come to their home. ey want to know that no one is doing anything risky with the grid that might possibly stop that. And on the flip side, if they believe that the use of data will lead to a better service and keep it more secure, then I think they will be in favour of it." e direction of travel does seem weighted in favour of AI. In July last year, predictive field service management company Oneserve commissioned research that found a quarter of utility companies in the UK have integrated AI into their systems. A further 37 per cent have plans to follow suit in the next five years. And as smart and interconnected technology plays an even bigger part in our everyday lives, and the grid becomes ever more complicated, AI will become the norm. Many grid systems already run on a semi-automated basis with manual overrides – so perhaps a fully automated grid is not that far away. In the grid of tomorrow, data could be just as important a commodity as energy itself. Algorithms and AI systems developed by Upside Energy will be used to analyse all aspects of the revenues available to Clayhill solar farm 34 www.utilityweek.co.uk/fLeX // You can understand how better to invest money into the right places, so you are building resilience in the right places. And when things fail, you can recover from those failures much quicker // Devrim Celal, chief executive, Upside Energy

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