How genAI can help accelerate the energy transition

Karen Auf Der Horst, Product Owner for GenAI-based Tools at German DSO Netze BW, explains how this technology is streamlining operations.

Generative AI (genAI) has become increasingly pervasive in the public arena, particularly since the emergence of ChatGPT a couple of years ago, and is also starting to be taken up by businesses.

With AI becoming ever more widely implemented in the energy sector, genAI is a natural extension – and one of those at the forefront is Netze BW, who in the young scientist Karen Auf der Horst, has appointed one of the first, if not the very first energy company staffer with ‘genAI’ in their title.

“I’m in the innovation department of my company looking at new technologies and my role is to look at ChatGPT and how we can use it and I have started a first project looking at the advantages and difficulties,” she explains.

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So far the main area of use is for operations where there are a lot of documents, she continues, saying her project is focussed on grid technicians in the field who have some specific query.

“We built an app which, just like ChatGPT, the technicians can query and with genAI the thousands of pages of documents can be gone through and an answer provided in no time.”

Looking ahead, Auf der Horst says that the use of genAI is just at its start and many use cases are likely to emerge, particularly with other new technologies such as genAI agents and knowledge graphs.

And for other energy companies and utilities looking at genAI, she advises to set up the architecture and work from there.

“Every use case is different and depends on the documents and end users and one needs to tune the system to the specific needs.”