by David Ferguson, EDF Energy
The potential for Artificial Intelligence in the energy industry, EDF Energy's early experiments and our vision of the future.
From the FreshTech 2017 conference by TechExeter
www.techexeter.uk
From Event to Action: Accelerate Your Decision Making with Real-Time Automation
AI in Energy
1. EDF Energy R&D UK Centre
Transforming the energy system with AI
David Ferguson,
Head of Digital Innovation
2. The rules of digital innovation
Move fast and break things.
Unless you are breaking stuff,
you are not moving fast
enough.
“
”- Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook
6. The new energy system… it’s really complex!
1 million homes with
solar panels
1 million homes with
smart thermostats
7. Energy innovation is not coming from the old energy sector
New tech + new ways of working
8. 80
5 Teams People
40 Phd students15 NationalitiesBudget
Nuclear
Renewables
Smart Customers
Digital Innovation
Open Innovation
Brighton
Manchester
London
£40m
Conventions or contracts with EDF
Energy Business Units or EDF Group100% 26% 10%
Public fundingCorporate activities
Funding
3 Locations
EDF Energy R&D UK Centre
9. Image: Wired
- Andrew Ng, Baidu, 2016
AI will transform many
industries.
But it’s not magic.
“
”
Let’s not get carried away just yet
10. What is it? Use cases for EDF Energy
Generation
● Condition monitoring
● Predictive maintenance
● Digital replicas
● Operational support
● Autonomous robotic devices
Customers
● Customer service
● Energy use analytics
● Home automation
● Optimisation and trading
Grids and networks
● Predictive maintenance
● Demand-side response
● Trading
Support functions
● Supply chain optimisation
● Legal services
Reasoning
Knowledge
Planning
Learning
Natural Language
Understanding
Perception
How could AI apply to EDF Energy?
21. Delivering the promise of AI in a ‘legacy’ company
Challenges
Generic
Specific to legacy
orgs.
Skills
Ethics
Privacy
Security
Data
Connectivity
Roll out
‘The day job’
22. Conclusions
The energy system is complex and is changing
AI is not magic
It will help manage the new, complex system
Our approach: start with small, difficult problems
Legacy companies have a significant disadvantage