Iberdrola looks to generative AI to drive energy sector innovation

Iberdrola is partnering with Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its preferred cloud provider for generative artificial intelligence developments.

The partnership, part of a broader deal with Amazon encompassing renewables development and digitalisation, will see Iberdrola using AWS technologies including AWS Lambda and Amazon Bedrock and SageMaker to develop generative AI applications to support customer engagement and drive efficiencies in energy production and within the wider business.

Earlier this year, Iberdrola established a generative AI ‘centre of excellence’ with AWS to develop more than 100 generative AI applications that enhance the customer experience, support employees and improve business processes.

With a generative AI platform built on Amazon Bedrock and its choice of foundation models, Iberdrola personnel are able to access the tools to build the genAI applications.

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For example, Iberdrola is building a generative AI application that will help its legal team quickly find and ask questions about corporate contracts.

Another development is of generative AI assistants that use real-time IoT data to provide field maintenance workers with specific instructions on how to service and repair power infrastructure and renewable sites more efficiently.

Iberdrola also is using generative AI-powered voicebots to help sales teams answer customer questions around products and tariffs in real time.

“We see AI playing a central role in helping us to deliver the smart grid, renewables and storage technology that will drive the energy transition forward,” said Sergio Merchan, global CIO at Iberdrola.

“As our preferred cloud provider, AWS will provide an innovative technical foundation to support us on this journey. Combining our unified data approach with AI and machine learning capabilities will help us build smarter and more secure networks to automate smart grids and more easily integrate renewable energy.”

Other joint projects include the development of a next-generation data platform aimed to help Iberdrola to further optimise the electricity being generated from its renewable energy assets.

This centralised ‘data lake’, built with AWS generative AI and the Renewables Data Lake, Redshift and SageMaker services, will consolidate data from Iberdrola’s over 400 renewable energy assets and business operations globally to enable the company to better gain operational insights with real-time asset monitoring, initiate predictive maintenance and generate power demand forecasts.

The companies also are developing an advanced ‘smart assistant’ application for customers to facilitate connectivity to devices like electric vehicle chargers and solar panels and control them autonomously, while other future projects include smart grid innovations such as developing the substation of the future using IoT and digital twins.

Expressing excitement to be working with Iberdrola, Howard Gefen, general manager of Energy & Utilities at AWS, promised: “Our generative AI capabilities will empower Iberdrola to streamline processes, enhance customer experiences and drive safe, energy solutions for a better future.”