Itron
Marina Donovan is Vice President of Global Marketing, ESG and Public Affairs at Itron.
Itron recently released its “2024 Itron Resourcefulness Insight Report,” as part of its decade-long research on the perspectives of utility executives and stakeholders on issues on how energy and water are delivered and used. The report, “Exploring AI for Utilities; The Promise and Challenges of Artificial Intelligence,” took a deep dive into the impact of artificial intelligence and machine learning, plus distributed or edge intelligence, and was explored in January’s issue of Public Utilities Fortnightly.
In this issue, Marina Donovan, Itron VP Global Marketing, ESG and Public Affairs looked at what roles AI and machine learning play now, and how utilities envision their impacts in the future. Big changes are here because of the big advances in technology, with more to come.
Respondents from six countries said that AI and machine learning can have the most impact around safety, improving business productivity, and helping with better engagement with consumers. Look for the report on the Itron website.
PUF’s Steve Mitnick: Tell our readers what the Itron Resourcefulness Insight Report is all about for this year.
Marina Donovan: Almost every year, we talk to utilities, and sometimes consumers, about trending issues and topics that are impacting our industry. We also talked to regulators a couple of years ago for the report.
This year’s report looks at the current trends and expectations of AI and machine learning on utility operations and strategies. We conducted the research in six countries and had a sampling of six hundred utility executives. They were from the U.S., Canada, France, U.K., India, and Australia.
A big focus area for Itron is around data and analytics. Those are the key drivers behind edge intelligence. As these technological advancements continue to shape our industry – and we’re foundational in all of that – we wanted to explore what roles AI and machine learning play now, and how utilities envision their impact in the future.
PUF: These next questions are linked. Why do you ask utilities about the challenges, but also what did you learn from them? That rolls into, what are the top challenges?
Marina Donovan: Challenges evolve over time. There are some things that have long been there and are key trends, but AI is relatively new. I was excited to see so much discussion about it at NARUC’s annual meeting in November.
I heard these same themes at NARUC, which our study validated, that the three top challenges in the U.S. today are meeting electricity demand at twenty-nine percent, improving customer engagement at twenty-eight percent, and the third one is addressing the workforce skills gap at twenty-seven percent.
Meeting demand is relatively new. We heard about doubling and tripling of the grid in the next decade, and a lot of people are concerned about how they are going to support that.
We also asked the question, “What are the top challenges going to be in five years?” Number one was enhancing safety. I bet a lot of that is through AI, meeting demand, improving customer engagement and the workforce skills gap. The answer was similar for three to five years from now, but enhancing safety was slightly ahead at thirty-four percent.
PUF: What technologies are utilities now deploying to address those challenges?
Marina Donovan: Today, utilities are focused on deploying consumer engagement tools and DERMs (distributed energy resource management systems). Those were the top two things that both ranked at thirty-four percent, followed by AMI at twenty-eight percent, which is table stakes.
AMI provides the intelligent communications network so utilities can get the visibility they need and then, ultimately, control. The fourth technology was sensors at twenty-seven percent.
PUF: Some utilities think AI is going to be doing everything, but on the other end is skepticism to wait and see what happens. What did you find out about the role of AI in meeting these challenges?
Marina Donovan: Businesses and utilities view AI as the answer to a host of challenges from the cost of labor to the need to make rapid, accurate decisions amid a ton of information. I was surprised when we read that eighty percent of utilities say AI and machine learning are extremely important or very important to address their challenges.
PUF: You talked to leaders in six different countries. Did you see differences among them or is it universal that this is what’s happening?
Marina Donovan: There were a few anomalies, but in general, the focus was around the same three things. Specifically, AI and machine learning can help us have the most impact around safety, improve our business productivity, and better engage with consumers. Globally, that’s what was so interesting.
PUF: How, specifically, can utilities use AI for safety?
Marina Donovan: There are three key areas. One is around real-time detection of hazardous conditions. The second one is predictive maintenance. The third one is around enhancing resilience through automated response.
PUF: Where’s Itron in bringing something to the table using AI?
Marina Donovan: We’re building on our thirty years of experience in machine learning and ramping up our capabilities using AI technologies. We’re focused on solutions that we’re bringing to the market, and we are using AI to help the development process.
Itron is focused on improving operational efficiencies, enhancing quality of service, increasing safety, and driving sustainability for utilities and cities. We’re embedding machine learning and AI into our solutions.
For example, we are enabling language process queries in our meter data management system. This is something that we have been working on with Microsoft, and we’ll be announcing more over time.
Our distributed energy resource solution is also being driven by machine learning, enabling back-office load disaggregation that quickly and accurately detects level two electric vehicle charging sessions, which is super important.
Then there is development and deployment of advanced endpoints to detect waveform anomalies. We’ve had this capability for many years to identify events like vegetation contact.
PUF: Talk about being able to detect minute changes regarding safety.
Marina Donovan: It could be anything from a tree to other things. There are all kinds of anomaly detections, but in this case, it would be any kind of vegetation, trees or anything that could be getting in the way that could be a potential problem or is getting too close to that wire.
PUF: Where is Itron, and the whole industry, going with this in the next few years?
Marina Donovan: Itron’s communications networks have been deployed by the majority of the large utilities in the U.S. The beauty of that is that once they have that network connected, then they can add other functionality. We are helping our customers address challenges with new and existing applications that we are rolling out in the field.
We have a solid foundation, and utilities don’t have to rip out and replace their infrastructure. They simply can add to it. We have all kinds of different distributed intelligence applications, such as location awareness and impedance detection. These applications lay the foundation to empower utilities with greater visibility and control at the grid edge.
When you make an investment with Itron, you’re investing in the future to streamline operations, create efficiencies, and access more intelligence at the edge.
PUF: What is exciting that we should be looking for this year?
Marina Donovan: There are so many exciting things. You are going to see more progress and more partner announcements that reinforce our grid edge intelligence strategy, and more customers talking about what they’re doing.
Our big event, in addition to our own Inspire event at the end of October, is DistribuTECH. We are planning a number of announcements related to what we’re doing with distributed energy management and helping consumers.
Again, we’re ultimately enabling edge intelligence with visibility into what’s happening at the edge of the network. Itron is at the edge and you’re going to see us continue to deliver on our strategy this year.
Lead image: Itron Vice President of Global Marketing, ESG and Public Affairs Marina Donovan, center, at PG&E’s Innovation Summit with, from left, Itron Senior Product Manager Mike Ting and PG&E Chief Grid Architect Chris Moris.
