Ed’s Note: AI and real-time forecasting, or how to make the power grid truly smart.

Is it possible to forecast the weather so accurately that one could know, in real time, when and where the sun will be shining and the wind will be blowing? US energy company AES and X, formerly known as Google X, are confident that with the help of AI, the answer will be yes.

Earlier this month, we share the news of how AES is harnessing the expertise of X, the moonshot factory, in order to develop new grid virtualisation technologies. These new “tools” will be used to simulate and virtualise AES’s distribution grids in Indiana and Ohio.

Some key issues are the detailed virtualisation of real-time bi-directional power flows, highly-accurate solar and wind resource forecasting and the development of prediction tools for periods from a few nanoseconds to decades into the future.