Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence has wide reaching applications, from customer service solutions, to load prediction in the electricity sector.

Overview

Overview

A great part of running the electrical grid that powers Canada involves data. It also involves data governance in order to utilize artificial intelligence and machine learning within these integrated management systems.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has wide-reaching applications including:

  • customer service solutions,
  • asset management applications,
  • load prediction,
  • and energy management solutions.

For example, utilities can use drones to inspect powerlines. The images from these drones can be sent to a central hub, where an AI interface can provide recommendations to field staff for repair and maintenance based on datapoints within the image.

History

Canada’s AI ranking in the world has since grown significantly to become a nation leading in AI development and research. Provincial governments are also stepping forward and funding three regional AI Research Institutes in Montreal, Toronto, and Edmonton. The recently proposed Bill C-11 has indicated that Canada is to move towards greater transparency in its data collection and the algorithms it uses to do this.

In 2017, the federal government awarded $125M to the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) to develop and publish Pan-Canadian AI Strategy. This strategy established three new National AI Institutes: Amii, Mila and the Vector Institute to bring together national and international collaborations in the AI field.

Did You Know?

  • Power restoration was reduced by 8 days between hurricane Irma and Wilma. The reduction in time was due to new AI technologies that predicted the availability of power delivered to locations based on need.
  • AI systems can improve damage assessment and decision making due to faster access of imagery and data.

Artificial intelligence and the future

As computing power increases and data continues to grow, models and algorithms will foster a new age of artificial intelligence. As such, data governance, the process of managing the availability, usability, integrity and security of the data in enterprise systems, will be key to its proper use in the electricity sector.

AI applications will need to incorporate risk management into AI frameworks. As systems become smarter, the need for cybersecurity increases. For example, electricity providers need to use customer data, in order to manage the grid at all stages from generation to distribution. However, the customer’s privacy needs to be protected as well.

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