U.S. energy regulators published over 9,000 documents in the past week. For energy professionals, these filings are full of gold: sales opportunities, consequential rule changes, and meaningful debates in which they need to make their voices heard. But the way to find the gold – using 60+ separate website document libraries of varying quality – makes the process long, painful, and invariably prone to missing key information.
Last week, we delved into the opaque and complex world of utility filings, exploring the hidden — and valuable — knowledge contained within integrated resource plans (IRPs) and rate cases.
Imagine a vast, dimly lit library of dusty old books. There is no librarian, and the indexing is so faded that it’s not useful. A daunting starting point for a hopeful researcher, but the books contain essential secrets that can predict the future and bring the reader great wealth. This is the world of electric utility filings and dockets — specifically Integrated Resource Plans (IRPs) and rate cases.
In April, I attended an SF Climate Week panel on the ways in which artificial intelligence solutions could support the transition to net zero electricity. When the session opened for comments, I was a bit surprised that the first ten audience members confronted the four panelists with variations of the exact same pointed question: “Aren’t your data centers going to overwhelm the electric grid and ensure climate disaster?”
This entry of Machine Readable is by Sam Steyer, Head of Data Science & Head of Customer Success at Halcyon
