Speaker
Description
Under the pressure of the energy transition and the digital transformation, there has been an intensification of global research efforts on AI for power systems in recent years. This led to the creation of a new practice and solutions applicable to a wide set of problems for the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity to customers. This presentation will give an overview of some of the current and future applications of artificial intelligence for power systems at Hydro-Québec to address the challenges faced by the company. While AI for specific tasks, like electric load forecasting for example, reached a level of maturity high enough to be used in our everyday operations, recent progress in generative modeling has the potential to widen applications of AI. Yet, Hydro-Québec’s network has some particularities due to Québec’s geography: most of the production is located in the North of the province, most of the load is located in the South and the network is not synchronized with its neighbours. This is a good test case for the generalization abilities of foundation models for power grids. We will show how Hydro-Québec Research Center structured its internal research initiative, called Voltaire, to participate in the development and test this new generation of generative AI algorithms.
