In what ways can AI optimise energy consumption and improve grid resilience in industrial settings , particularly with the increasing integration of renewable energy sources ?
Sophie : IFS has a tool called What If Scenario Explorer , which helps companies get comfortable with shifting to electric vehicles ( EVs ) or different sources of energy , for example . It can model what the impact will be on your operational and financial KPIs . I find that interesting because a lot of the time , companies need to get comfortable with change . If I shift to a different energy source , or a different way of working , what ’ s that going to do to my fleet time or engineer ? That ’ s typically something that we help them model out .
Copperleaf helps compare apples with elephants , analysing hundreds of thousands of different potential investment cases to see which is the best investment case . Do you upgrade that existing infrastructure ? Do you go for something completely new ? Do you leave it as is ? What does that do in terms of your risk appetite , your operational goals or KPIs , your financial metrics or sustainability goals ?
Kevin : One of the best aspects of this example is that IFS contains a lot of data in transactions from our customers throughout the day . IFS has a large amount of data that we ’ re amassing and able to analyse , but one of the key trends right now is that we ’ re able to start looking at what ’ s referred to as unstructured data . Whether that ’ s weather information and weather data for better planning for storms , IFS can help to plan by pre-staging labour , spare parts or different equipment for when a storm comes through .
Additionally , can we also look at consumption rates by provider to guide our customers , perhaps advising that if they consume energy at these hours instead of these hours , we might be able to consume it at off-peak rates or can incorporate more wind or more solar into the consumption mix .
We can look at both the data that the customer is producing from a consumption perspective , but also provider information and other factors to help guide the customer in terms of how to consume that energy and when .
62 February 2025