Dive Brief:

• The Electric Power Research Institute is launching an international consortium to advance an open-source artificial intelligence model designed for the power sector, it said Thursday.
• The Open Power AI Consortium will develop and maintain domain-specific AI models and datasets optimized for the power sector, collaborate with utilities and other stakeholders to develop power-sector AI use cases and draw on “global resources and expertise … to accelerate innovation and de-risk deployment,” EPRI said.  
• Founding consortium members include utilities and independent power producers, grid operators, software developers, and major technology companies including Microsoft and NVIDIA, with more to follow, EPRI said.

Dive Insight:

Along with founding partners NVIDIA and Articul8, an enterprise generative AI company, EPRI “has developed the first set of industry-first domain-specific GenAI models for electric and power systems aimed at advancing the energy transformation,” the research organization said Thursday.

Those models will be available as an NVIDIA NIM microservice, EPRI said.

"Over the next decade, AI has the great potential to revolutionize the power sector by delivering the capability to enhance grid reliability, optimize asset performance, and enable more efficient energy management," EPRI President and CEO Arshad Mansoor said in a statement.

The open models developed by the consortium will help utilities and other power-sector stakeholders address complex future challenges like grid modernization, decarbonization and resilience, NVIDIA Senior Managing Director of Energy Marc Spieler added.

The Open Power AI Consortium’s founding roster features more than a dozen U.S. utilities, independent power producers, power retailers and grid operators, including Alliant Energy, Ameren, Constellation Energy, Duke Energy, Exelon, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, New York Power Authority and Southern Company. 

Also participating are “key technology companies” like AWS, Microsoft, NVIDIA and Oracle, along with nuclear technology developer Rolls-Royce SMR Limited, EPRI said.

Several consortium members hail from the Middle East and Asia, including GCC Interconnection Authority, which operates the electric grid across most of the Arabian Peninsula; Saudi Electricity Company; and Korea Electric Power Corp.

“This collaboration is proof of how AI can move beyond hype to deliver real, measurable impact,” Articul8 founder and CEO Arun Subramaniyan said in a statement.

Among other functions, consortium members will develop “AI roadmaps” in partnership with EPRI member utilities and other partners, maintain a controlled “sandbox” environment where researchers can evaluate AI use cases, share those use cases for further refinement, and “facilitate knowledge sharing and best practices among consortium members to maximize the impact of AI technologies,” according to an EPRI fact sheet. 

Consortium members can contribute by participating in meetings, sharing data and insights, and making financial and in-kind contributions, EPRI said.