Generative AI: The New Power Player in Utilities

The utilities industry is poised to undergo a transformation with generative AI, a multifaceted technology well-suited to address the sector’s complex challenges. With more than 3,000 utilities in North America, the top eight of which manage assets worth $980 billion, including nearly 200 million smart meters, the challenges are significant.

Imagine a multi-state blackout that lasts for days, skyrocketing energy bills due to extreme weather, or supply chain disruptions that make repair and maintenance impossible. Applying Generative AI to challenges in the utility sector has the potential to create significant value by focusing both on operational efficiency as well as customer engagement.

In the utilities space, generative AI has the potential to enhance asset optimization and maintenance through the synthesis of data from sensors, logs, defects, and historical records, leading to cost-effective operations.

The technology can also transform utility customer service by:

• Creating detailed load profiles;
• Utilizing historical data, energy usage, and weather patterns to enhance direct communication with end users;
• Providing service technicians with relevant insights.

Making the vision a reality

Major utilities are faced with a range of critical business challenges, including: managing risks from aging poles and transmission wires; promoting the efficiency and safety of field personnel; data collection for effective problem resolution; reducing the impact of electricity outages from increasingly intense and unpredictable weather events, and integrating the massive increase in renewable energy resources into the electricity grid.

Cognizant is helping utilities tackle these, and other challenges with a generative-AI enabled accelerator called IRENO (Intuitive Response Enabled Network Operations), a solution developed out of Cognizant’s Bluebolt grassroots innovation program.

The idea is to capitalize on gen AI’s ability to provide a deeper understanding of employee and customer experiences, giving utilities the ability to anticipate and prevent equipment failures while maintaining reliability. Holistically, this approach empowers utility customers to better navigate the challenges of the modern utilities landscape, ensuring operational continuity even in the face of potential nightmare scenarios.

By leveraging generative AI, in the cloud or at the edge, utilities can expect to improve overall situational awareness, real time operations control, reliable network operations and storm and field management operations. Cognizant is already working with a large US utility to implement IRENO for their engineering operations, and is ramping up the solution to manage over 5 million smart meters integrated with grid asset control systems.

Through this work, we aim to establish and demonstrate the strong value proposition of adding generative AI to utility networks operations. Our goal is to drive significant efficiency improvements and cost reductions through faster resolution and better management of field operations.

We’ll be demoing IRENO and other grid modernization solutions at the DISTRIBUTECH in Orlando, FL between Feb 26-29, 2024. Come and pay us a visit to learn more.

Annadurai Elango Madhuraj Jadhav SOMJYOTI(Som) MUKHERJEE Saurabh Mehta Syama Sundar Peesapati Pankaj Guglani Sharath Prasad Anjali Deo

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