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The use of artificial intelligence is aflame in the utility space. It is the exciting new frontier that promises, for low cost, to take the utility industry to a new place, facilitating the management of everything from vegetation control to nuclear fuel burn-up and from customer service to weather forecasting.

AI excels at managing complex operations, where there needs to be situational awareness. For example, it has great promise for managing distributed energy resources and for early warning of incipient failure in a turbine or pump. It can anticipate the future from a matrix of all the known possibilities or it can walk a customer through their bill in a conversational and reassuring way.

Although in some areas AI is seen as problematic in its impact, to utilities it would seem to be to be a gift that will keep on giving with time.

Utilities are famously cautious adopters of new technologies largely because of their real-time need to keep the lights on, but they have seen the AI light quickly. And prima facie, it looks as though it will bring about evolutionary change bordering on revolutionary.

The United States Energy Association’s next virtual press briefing will explore the future of the utility business in the time of AI. The briefing, which is scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 2, at 11 a.m. EDT, will touch on every aspect of AI in the utility going forward from vegetation control to nuclear fuel design and from managing complex grid relationships and the supply chain to load planning and personnel deployment.

As with others in the series, the briefing will consist of a panel of senior reporters interviewing a panel of experts. It runs just over an hour, is collegial in nature, and is open to the press and the public.

The briefings are designed to give reporters a story they can write right away and information they can bank for future stories.

I organize and moderate these briefings, and Mark Menezes, USEA president and CEO, and former deputy secretary of energy, gives welcoming remarks and is on hand to lend his expertise.

The Experts: 

• Venkat Tirupati, Vice President of DevOps and Grid Transformation, ERCOT
• Sacha Fontaine, AI Utility Consultant, SAS
• Satya Nitta, Co-founder and CEO, Emergence
• Robert Austin, Senior Manager, EPRI
• Omar Hatamleh, Chief AI Officer, NASA
• John Savage, An Wang Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, Brown University
• Andy Abranches, Senior Director,  Wildfire Preparedness and Operations, PG&E

The Reporters: 

• Vijay Vaitheeswaran, The Economist
• Ken Silverstein, Forbes
• Adam Clayton Powell III, PBS
• Matt Chester, Energy Central
• Peter Behr, E&E News