Climate change and depletion of the Earth’s natural resources are frequent media headlines directly tied to demand for clean, affordable, and reliable energy. In parallel, gains in computing, memory, and storage have made artificial intelligence technologies more accessible. The intersection of AI and energy may hold the key to unlocking some of the greatest challenges our world faces. “Exponential technology is rapidly pushing electricity to reach the point of eventually becoming nearly free,” remarks Pascal Finette of Singularity University. Research into renewables and the use of simulations to creates digital twins are two examples of the accelerated value that machine learning brings to the energy sector. This track explores the tremendous promise possible today and in the near future.

Thursday, October 24

Waterfront 3

7:45 am Registration Opens

8:00 Continental Breakfast (Harborview Foyer)

9:00 – 12:25 pm Keynote Session (Harborview)

12:25 pm Networking, Coffee & Dessert in the Expo (Commonwealth Hall)

1:30 pm Opening Remarks

Kevin Prouty, Group Vice President IDC Energy Insights, IDC

1:35 AI @ DOE

Jermon Bafaty, White House Fellow for the Artificial Intelligence and Technology Office (AITO), U.S. Department of Energy

1:45 How AI, IIoT, and Cognitive Digital Twins are Shaping the Future of Energy Industry

Ahmed El Adl, PhD, AI Consulting & Intelligent Solutions Leader, Accenture

In this session, we'll discuss key myths and misunderstandings resulting in failed AI initiatives causing frustration and the loss of major business opportunities.

The energy industry started to adopt the Digital Twin (DT) to effectively manage the whole lifecycle of its business-critial equipment, complex processes, and modern Human Workforce. However, the result is often "yet another analystics tool". We'll highlight the new architectureal paradigm called Cognitive Digital Twin (CDT) that help overcome the weaknesses of the current approach and spur relevant innovation shaping the new energy industry in the era of "industrial artificial intelligence".

2:15 Beyond Asset Automation: AI as a Transformational Foundation in the Energy Industry

Kevin Prouty, Group Vice President IDC Energy Insights, IDC

This session highlights how AI and process automation plays a key role in transforming the energy industry. From real-time decision-making at the well site in the Oil & Gas industry to automated outage management in utilities, AI is in the process of remaking how people interact with their businesses. Use cases that will be explored range from self-healing production assets to automating truck rolls for field service, to revenue protection with smart meters. Learn how companies throughout the energy value chain are using AI to solve problems long considered unsolvable.

2:30 Using AI to Improve Industrial Energy Efficiency

Daiane Piva, Energy Efficiency Improvement Consultant, Tata Steel Europe

The fact that AI is set to disrupt industrial sectors is no news, but the specific ways it will do so is still left for discovery. With that in mind, our team has taken on the task of exploring the power of AI to improve the energy performance of industrial processes. What we have found was beyond expectations. Using millions of data points from re-heating furnaces, we identified the most important parameters that triggered energy use, and based on that, trained an AI model which optimized consumption to drive costs and CO2 emissions down.

2:55 Addressing Multi-Agent Challenges in Energy Systems with AI

Mike Franklin, PhD, Assistant Professor, College of Computing, Kennesaw State University, Marietta Campus

The harsh reality is this - energy system modeling is highly-complex. Many AI systems use monolithic models and uniform policies, both of which reduce the efficacy and applicability of the system. Multi-agent systems, where each agent or aggregate group of agents have their own distinct policy, are more powerful and expressive, and thus model the complex world of energy systems more effectively. Further, they can better reflect the hierarchical nature of these systems. 

3:20 Networking Break in the Expo (Commonwealth Hall)

4:05 Transforming Asset Inspection in Energy leveraging Computer Vision & NLP

Shyam Krishnaswamy, Director of Innovation & Strategy, Exelon Corporation 

Asset performance is key to power industry operations. Optimizing and maximizing the life of assets become very important in controlling costs, delivering service to our customers. Aerolabs, an Exelon company, is leveraging drones and AI capabilities inspecting and detecting anomalies to drive asset performance. 

Smaine Zeroug, PhD, Research Director, Applied Math and Data Analytics, Schlumberger

While progress has been made in the application of ML to measurement data pertaining to subsurface characterization in O&G exploration and field development, this has largely focused on bringing efficiency to time-consuming processing tasks. Application of deep learning and AI to these data for developing cognitive interpretation algorithms faces multiple challenges due to the data scarcity, richness in information, and lack of labels. Domain knowledge and physical modeling of subsurface measurements and geological processes become critical ingredients to address these challenges.

5:05 Networking Reception in the Expo (Commonwealth Hall)

6:30 Meetup Groups (Cityview)

7:30 Close of Day 2