The South African electricity supply grid has been under enormous pressure for the last 6 months and one wonders whether an investment in some AI technology might solve some of the issues the country is facing.
I’m not going to go into the issues around these problems – at the end of the day it is a simple case of supply and demand. I would however propose that during their upgrade process maybe the national energy supplier should spend some time investing in some AI to handle the supply and demand side of things.
About 9 months ago Eskom sent people around to install “trip switches” onto household geysers which would allow the company to switch them off during high demand areas. In all this time we have yet to see ours kick in.
The current system seems to be configured to simply switch off areas in bulk irrespective of whether or not they are a drain on the system. This seems to be a very unscientific way of managing the process. By upgrading supply and demand management on the grid, Eskom could switch off “dormant” areas (such as households) during the day when the owners are more than likely at work.
AI itself could also be used for direct communication with businesses and residences. If the system knew that they were getting close to maximum capacity and urgently needed to cut demand in an area by say 10% then an SMS (text message) system communicating directly with residences and business owners saying that demand needs to be urgently reduced may also have some effect. Imagine being able to say to a business owner – “you need to cut your electrical consumption immediately by 10% or we will be forced to completely pull you off the grid for a 2 hour period” - the business owner would far rather cut their demand and stay partially online than collapse completely for an extended period of time.
Obviously a system like the above has enormous financial costs but it would certainly remove some of the issues that the country is currently facing. Eskom is looking to upgrade their infrastructure to the tune of some R50 billion – why not invest some of this in some intelligent applications?
The reality is that when resources are stretched – AI can be a perfect tool to assist in managing supply and demand.
I’m not going to go into the issues around these problems – at the end of the day it is a simple case of supply and demand. I would however propose that during their upgrade process maybe the national energy supplier should spend some time investing in some AI to handle the supply and demand side of things.
About 9 months ago Eskom sent people around to install “trip switches” onto household geysers which would allow the company to switch them off during high demand areas. In all this time we have yet to see ours kick in.
The current system seems to be configured to simply switch off areas in bulk irrespective of whether or not they are a drain on the system. This seems to be a very unscientific way of managing the process. By upgrading supply and demand management on the grid, Eskom could switch off “dormant” areas (such as households) during the day when the owners are more than likely at work.
AI itself could also be used for direct communication with businesses and residences. If the system knew that they were getting close to maximum capacity and urgently needed to cut demand in an area by say 10% then an SMS (text message) system communicating directly with residences and business owners saying that demand needs to be urgently reduced may also have some effect. Imagine being able to say to a business owner – “you need to cut your electrical consumption immediately by 10% or we will be forced to completely pull you off the grid for a 2 hour period” - the business owner would far rather cut their demand and stay partially online than collapse completely for an extended period of time.
Obviously a system like the above has enormous financial costs but it would certainly remove some of the issues that the country is currently facing. Eskom is looking to upgrade their infrastructure to the tune of some R50 billion – why not invest some of this in some intelligent applications?
The reality is that when resources are stretched – AI can be a perfect tool to assist in managing supply and demand.
