Utilities Tech Outlook Weekly Brief
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Devashish Paul, Founder and CEO The energy sector is currently undergoing two crucial transformations—digitalization and liberalization. This has lead to the generation of a lot of data from smart meters, grid equipment, edge sensors, GIS systems, and others. The data holds a huge potential in helping utilities reduce expenditure , lower carbon emissions, and manage energy generation and supply. Though the advantages of gaining insights into this data are myriad, the utilities are limited by lack of resources and technology tools. This is where BluWave-ai, an Ottawa-based technology innovator in distributed renewable energy space, comes into the picture. The company’s cloud-based energy optimization platform ingests the data from grid IoT devices (sensors, meters, etc.) to discover the patterns in bandwidth utilization and power generation to help utilities plan the operations better. The platform predicts changing operating conditions, makes a functional call on it, and sends the dispatch control signal on how to configure certain elements in the utilities to reduce the cost of energy and carbon footprint. Often utilities use expensive fossil fuel-based energy sources to provision the final amount of energy that is needed for consumer and industrial demand. This is because they do not know in advance the energy requirements and whether they can depend on solar or wind energy to get there, or if they can do certain things to manage their load to reduce the overall energy requirements to stay within the limits of energy produced. BluWave-ai’s optimization platform provides the utilities the continuous insights to help them change their generation, mix load and balance that off perfectly with minimal human operator intervention. “This continuously saves them money throughout any given 24 hour period for the whole year. Maybe the value of any given hour isn’t earth shattering, but when you add this small amount of savings over 8760 hours in a year, suddenly it adds up to a substantial amount,” he adds.
Utilities use our platform to make good decisions that save them 10 to 20 percent of energy costs and optimize the use of renewable energy sources
Management
Devashish Paul, Founder and CEO
Description
BluWave-ai is focused on driving the proliferation of renewable energy and electric transportation worldwide. The company’s solutions apply artificial intelligence to optimize the cost, availability, and reliability of different energy sources, both renewable and non-renewable, in real-time. The platform predicts changing operating condition, makes a functional call on it, and sends the dispatch control signal on how to configure certain elements in the utilities to reduce the cost of energy and carbon footprint. This lets the customers—communities, corporations and utilities—improve their energy decisions for sustainability, reliability, and affordability
The company portfolio strategically covers the enabling technology and underpins its products for: electric vehicles and other smart loads; utilities; energy consumers including residential applications, industrial, institutional and fleet operations; electricity system operators and generation.
In recent years the demand on North American grids has been fairly level with conservation measures coming into effect while demand from electrification started to grow. Over the next 10 years, this picture is expected to change quickly as the demands of electrification in the transport and energy sector take off driven by government incentives to tackle emissions and climate change risks. The US Energy Department estimates that total investments for grid modernization in that country alone require from $350 to $500 billion (Transforming the Nation’s Electricity System: The Second Installment of the QER). A report by the Brattle Group estimates that for the next 10 years, the additional investment to support a high electrification scenario will amount to $160 billion.
“To achieve this goal, BluWave-ai over its 7-year history has embarked on an ambitious path of inventions to manage the demand and variable renewable generation sources replacing fossil-fuel generation is an intelligent software overlay on the grid, to balance generation with demand and offset expensive capital investments,” said Devashish Paul, CEO of BluWave-ai, “BluWave-ai estimates the market for these intelligent software solutions to be $14B - $20B or 4% of expected grid CAPEX upgrades in lifetime software deployments for the grid electrification in North America. Our patent portfolio and products enable this software grid transition overlay.”
BluWave-ai has deployed the patents and inventions with its Edge & Center Energy Optimization platform, including Atlas which has built a database of operational data over the years along with a set of trained AI models.
“BluWave-ai's advanced technologies are empowering the global evolution of traditional electrical grids toward more sustainable, efficient, and resilient software-defined smart grids in the face of growing energy demands and climate changes,” said Thomas Triplet, Senior Director of Engineering at Bluwave-ai, “offering cost-effective and scalable solutions for enhancing grid performance and reliability and contributing to global sustainability goals.”
BluWave-ai's growing IP portfolio now consists of 30 U.S. patent applications filed with seven granted, including the following:
• Two patents (11,133,676 and 11,831,163) relating to systems and AI-based methods for the optimization of fluctuating Renewable Energy-Battery systems while maximizing battery life
• Three patents (10,510,128, 11,170,456 and 11,830,090) to enhance and optimize energy grid systems. The patents describe in particular the predictive optimization of energy grid systems using AI models and signatures. The improved efficiency leads to reduced energy losses and more effective utilization of grid resources and is widely applicable to various energy systems, including wind farms, solar farms, and energy storage systems.
• One patent (11,267,362) relating to systems and methods for adaptive optimization for electric vehicle fleet charging. They cover in particular AI models to predict resource availability/demand, and electric vehicle fleet charging based on fluctuating renewable energy generation and electricity pricing.
• One patent (12,040,650) relating to AI-based methods for the optimal and dynamic charging of energy storage assets connected to a power grid
“As Canada’s Law Firm, we are excited to work with BluWave-ai. Their cutting-edge work in AI-powered solutions for energy optimization aligns perfectly with our commitment to the environment and innovation,” said Rob Morris, Chief Operating Officer of BLG. “We wish BluWave-ai every success as they take their product to market.”
Mike McLean, CEO of the Innovation Asset Collective said, “To become global technology champions, Canadian companies need to understand the use of IP as a strategic business tool and build strong IP ownership positions to support their growth. You cannot commercialize what you don’t own. Only companies with sufficient freedom to operate can be assured of capturing the high returns that deliver prosperity to Canada’s economy. It is exciting to see companies like BluWave-ai building the ownership of IP that will allow them to capture the financial benefits of their innovation.”
BluWave-ai is open to discussing strategic opportunities for licensing and cross-licensing its IP portfolio to select customers, partners, research labs and universities. As an added benefit, BluWave-ai’s customers under contract to use its products automatically get access to use the IP portfolio embedded in its product during the duration of all contracts. Please contact info@bluwave-ai.com to learn more.