Kristian Ruby, secretary general of Eurelectric, the trade association that represents the interests of the electricity industry in Europe, is fascinated by AI – and never simply because it replaces the necessity to send inspectors in climbing gear to rope up and down the blades of wind turbines . Inspectors at the moment are sending drones with AI tools, eliminating a number of the costly, time-consuming and dangerous manual inspections required to maintain wind farms operating safely and efficiently.
“AI is probably the most transformative technology humanity has ever seen,” Ruby said at an executive event SAP Energy and Utilities Conference in Seville, Spain, moderated by Daniela Haldy-Sellmann, Global VP and Head of Energy and Utilities at SAP. “The strange thing about this kind of technology is that we are stunned when we first see it, but suddenly it becomes normal.”
The electrification of Europe
AI is omnipresent within the industry. As the ability grid becomes more decentralized and digitalized, AI is getting used to efficiently balance the grid by analyzing data from various sources, including consumers, generators and storage. In electromobility, AI coordinates the charging of electrical cars and adapts charging demand to cost signals and availability. It detects anomalies in production, consumption or transmission and develops appropriate solutions. And after all it’s used to coordinate and perform maintenance work, minimizing costs and disruption to network operations.
Ruby’s role at Eurelectric is to advise decision-makers from around 3,500 electricity sector corporations in Europe, in addition to a lot of affiliated organizations in other regions. It involves interpreting quite a lot of regulations to assist corporations comply because the EU advances its green transition to scale back emissions by 55% by 2030.
“By 2030, we assume that there will be around 75 million electric cars on the road. “Putting the combustion engine ice age behind us will require a lot of new charging infrastructure, not to mention other factors like bringing 50 million heat pumps onto the grid,” Ruby said.
He explained that the market is experiencing an everyday renewable energy gold rush because the EU nears the top of a political mandate and recent politicians and policymakers jockey for position as a brand new era dawns. In addition, an estimated 60 to 70 billion euros in investments within the distribution networks can be needed by 2050.
The mega trend
The biggest change Ruby sees within the energy transition is decentralization. While there’ll still be many centralized plants, Eurelectric estimates that around 70% of all recent generation capability can be connected to medium and low voltage networks, resulting in a large shift in dynamics.
“We have to operate networks differently. We need to reconstruct supply to ensure local business demand is met. “Distributors will be faced with much more complex operations and much higher burdens and will have a variety of customers that they did not have before,” he explained.
To cope with these changes, Ruby sees a necessity for more entrepreneurs, fewer regulatory restrictions and a revised investment window with greater visibility, more foresight and a stronger concentrate on digital than ever before.
To meet them Vision of Eurelectric – which is to create a sustainable, competitive industry in Europe that delivers inexpensive, protected and clean electricity – Ruby and his team aim to discover relevant topics of critical business interest and unite the industry based on shared views.
“We communicate the interests of our stakeholders to policymakers in Brussels, which requires a lot of thinking, and advise them on all the issues that need to be taken into account when drafting laws.” We then pass on the small print of the regulations to the industry in order that they’ll “We can prepare implementation plans for the future,” he explained.
Focus on the motion, not the problem
Ruby is happy that change is occurring much faster than expected. In 2024, 48% of all electricity will come from renewable energies, that are being adopted at a record pace. This acceleration helps drive prices down, sometimes to only a couple of euros per megawatt hour. It’s also exciting that each fifth recent automobile last yr was an electrical automobile.
“Thanks to the rapid adoption of these new technologies, we are witnessing an accelerated transition to a cleaner, greener economy,” he said. “We are living through a historically intense time. We are fundamentally changing the entire economy in a relatively short period of time, and for good reason, because the ecosystems around us are collapsing, for example extreme weather conditions. So even though there is some frustration and confusion, we should not be distracted. Now it’s time to focus on implementation.”
Returning to the subject of AI, Ruby noted that about 90% of the world’s digital data was created within the last two years, leading to a complete of no less than 123 zettabytes of information in 2023 – a sum so astronomical that it accommodates 21 zeros includes. In the energy sector alone, the quantity of information is overwhelming, especially while you consider how much data corporations must process to make data-driven decisions.
At the identical time, corporations have to be careful about doing business in a brand new world of capital and labor. AI is an asset, nevertheless it acts as a workforce, performing tasks which might be done by humans. “Companies are handing over a lot of decision-making power to AI. If things go wrong, we as a company or as individuals in management are still liable for any mistakes. Therefore, we must apply ethical principles when using these hybrid assets,” Ruby concluded.
