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OTTAWA, Canada – March 8th, 2023
BluWave-ai announced today the release of its load predictor for the province-wide Ontario electricity system. Building of 5 years in model training, data processing, and optimization, BluWave-ai has assembled a suite of predictors for energy optimization which are deployed worldwide with customers using the SaaS products BluWave-ai Edge and BluWave-ai Center. The system-wide load predictor builds off previously successful load prediction for Tata Power and their load management for Mumbai, India.
The AI-driven load predictor has been specifically tuned and trained to accurately predict the system load for the province of Ontario. Predictions are based on publicly available system data, weather feeds, and other data provided by industrial and commercial customers. It provides accurate day-ahead and intra-day forecasts to system operators coupled with EV storage provides grid balancing system-wide solution, available as a subscription service. The system is retrainable with customization for other electricity systems worldwide.
Ontario’s electricity system is managed by the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO). This is an expansive and diverse operation, including large cities and rural regions, and widely varying climate across the province. The system covers a mix of renewable, nuclear, and dispatchable-gas generation, with a capacity of 38GW covering over 1M km2 feeding local distribution for a population of 15M.
“Releasing this solution for system-wide demand forecasting provides our system operator, distribution utility, and enterprise customers advantages to mitigate system peaks and reduce energy costs as consumers. The system load prediction builds on 5 years of AI platform optimization, operating worldwide delivering over 500 000 real-time AI energy dispatches as of 2022,” said Thomas Triplet Senior Director, AI & Engineering, “For the Ontario system, we trained the AI on years of historical system demand data along with weather and other data feeds, providing superior forecast accuracy that will adapt in real-time to system changes to provide continued accuracy.”
The load predictor has the ability to also incorporate high-penetration of behind-the-meter solar generation for jurisdictions, impacting loads, and building on BluWave-ai’s experience from projects in both Indian and US markets. By accurately forecasting the system demand for electricity, system operators and distribution utilities can better manage their operations. This includes the scheduling and dispatch of energy storage fossil fuel power plants and other dispatchable generation to minimize the use of fossil fuel sources, taking into account renewable energy generation to match the demand. As well, this can be useful for large consumers, signaling upcoming system peaks, reducing their demand through demand response or pricing signals.
“Previously the variability in running a grid came exclusively from load variation from economic and cultural activities and variability of renewables, requiring a lot of dispatchable energy from carbon emitting sources to keep the grid balanced,” said Devashish Paul, CEO of BluWave-ai, “With BluWave-ai’s system-wide load predictors and wind and solar predictors already deployed worldwide, we now have a unique offering with our EV Everywhere program. This will allow aggregation of EVs to provide system operators with a dispatchable energy resource at scale allowing for grid balancing by using EVs as a collective negative or positive load as required.”
BluWave-ai’s EV Everywhere program was first announced first announced with the IESO in Ontario, however combining the company’s system wide load predictor and EV Everywhere in any jurisdiction provides system operators with a wholistic load management and EV storage solution. By 2026, BluWave-ai’s BluSight Analyst team projects up to 500MW of collective EV storage on the Ontario grid alone. Large electricity consumers – including: EV fleet operators, commercial, industrial, and institutional consumers – can use the service to accurately predict upcoming electricity system demand peaks. This allows them to reduce their demand at the right time and avoid higher energy costs during these periods. This includes coincident peaks that set Global Adjustment charges in Ontario and similar peak demand charges in other system markets. This can be achieved by reducing dispatchable loads; modulating or shifting EV charging; and discharging energy from local energy storage.
“Combining cloud based AI prediction and optimization of system wide loads, and coupling this with EV management and incentivization is key to the energy transition," said Bill Pierce, Publisher at EVInfo.net. “With large variability of electricity load system wide, and EV charging potentially not helping grid operations, there is a large opportunity to balance the grid with the large storage that EVs present in systems such as California, New York and Texas. However, it requires both system wide load prediction, and managed EV systems at a large scale, with real time data-based decision making. It is exciting that BluWave-ai is providing these building blocks to the market.”
BluWave-ai also announced its BluSight program today. If you are an electricity system operator and would like to test the BluWave-ai predictor for your system, the company is offering the first 3 qualified system operators a one month of free trial, including data preprocessing and AI model training. To request participation in this program, please contact: [email protected]
Click here to learn more about the Ontario Load Predictor and a real-time product preview of the Ontario load predictor day ahead forecasts. To subscribe to the service or to enquire about use for other electricity systems, contact: [email protected]
About BluWave-ai
BluWave-ai is focused on driving the proliferation of renewable energy and electric transportation worldwide. Our solutions apply artificial intelligence (AI) cloud software to optimize the cost, carbon footprint and reliability of different energy sources, both renewable and non-renewable, in real-time. This lets our customers – utilities, fleet operators and electricity system operators to improve their energy-related decision making in planning and in live systems to decrease costs and carbon footprint. Every day our employees come to BluWave-ai with the mission to decarbonize the planet by using hardware assets more efficiently with AI software while we build the world's premier renewable energy and transport electrification AI company based in Canada.
For more information please contact:
Brandon Paul
Senior Corporate Marketing Manager, BluWave-ai