California’s PG&E accelerates energy transition via AI adoption

California’s Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) will use global energy storage tech company Fluence’s AI-powered Trading Platform to optimize its battery energy storage system at Moss Landing.

PG&E and AI

In October, as Electrek reported, Fluence acquired San Francisco-based Advanced Microgrid Solutions, a provider of AI-powered software for utility-scale storage and generation assets. The now merged companies will help utilities, developers, and commercial and industrial customers optimize energy storage and flexible assets to improve grid reliability and efficiency, deliver additional revenue, and support the global transition to more sustainable and resilient power systems.

PG&E is Fluence’s first announced Trading Platform customer in the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) wholesale market.

Fluence will provide optimization and market bidding services for PG&E’s Moss Landing BESS, a 182.5 MW, 730 MWh battery energy storage system in Moss Landing, California. Moss Landing BESS, which uses Tesla Energy battery storage equipment, will be among the world’s largest battery storage projects when completed in the second quarter of 2021. PG&E plans to begin using the software at Moss Landing later this year.

Using artificial intelligence, advanced price forecasting, portfolio optimization, and market bidding algorithms, the software will ensure the system is responding optimally to market and reliability needs in the CAISO.

By providing asset and portfolio managers with updated price forecasts and optimized bids every hour, PG&E will maximize the value of the asset for its customers and support California’s transition to a more sustainable and resilient electric grid.

Seyed Madaeni, chief digital officer of Fluence, said:

This technology-agnostic software provides PG&E with a single tool that can optimize not only the Moss Landing project, but potentially entire portfolios of generation and storage resources to enhance affordability of resources. We are excited to work with PG&E to use advanced technology to improve the efficiency and reliability of the CAISO market and lower costs for California consumers.

PG&E asked customers this week to conserve energy in order to help ease stressed grid conditions in the Midwest, Texas, and the Southeast due to extreme weather. No outages were expected in California.

PG&E has had its own grid stability problems in 2020 with widespread catastrophic wildfires. The San Francisco Chronicle says the company is working on its 2021 plan to prevent further wildfires and resulting problems.