For all of us working for and with power utilities, we are witnessing the largest transformation in five decades. It’s an engineering, business, and talent challenge of extraordinary proportions, with the energy system having to reinvent itself end-to-end to align with net-zero goals and drive towards cleaner energy. Given the pace of change required for this ambitious undertaking, industry leaders should explore all possible technologies and sustainable investments to accelerate the process.
The technology trend on everyone’s lips is generative AI. Faced with such a seismic change, this technology has come to the fore, demonstrating great potential for total enterprise reinvention across the utility value chain. For a start, looking at the bottom line, in a context where affordability for the utility and the customer is top of mind, it can help improve cost recovery and maximize profitability. Indeed, Accenture’s recent analysis shows that almost 40% of utilities’ working hours can benefit from automation or augmentation through generative AI and up to approximately two-thirds in customer service, human resources (HR), and finance. But generative AI has the potential to go beyond these functions to underpin a step change. In a second wave of change, informed by test use cases from the initial applications detailed above, generative AI can then be applied to core functions, helping to transform asset management, predictive maintenance, and the difficult permitting and consenting process for infrastructure projects. Accenture analysis indicates that more than a third (38%) of electrical engineers’ hours can be positively impacted in areas including developing plans, creating designs, and monitoring and reporting on operations.
Better productivity. Better performance.
We have yet to really understand the full potential of implementing generative AI across the power utility value chain. In the short term however, utilities will realize most value by focusing on areas such as energy retail and HR applications, from enabling customer self-service at scale to implementing more effective upskilling of the workforce.
Indeed, ongoing external factors, including the visible and often devastating effects of climate change and economic pressures, are driving a shift in utility customers' needs, along with the criteria they use to choose energy providers. As a result, utilities are finding a more tailored approach to customer service is needed. They can use generative AI to power a virtual agent to support call transcription, detect customer sentiment, provide dynamic real-time suggestions to live agents, and help write semi-automatic follow up emails in everyday language. It is not about replacing an agent, but bringing a new level of performance in each interaction.
For instance, a large utilities company in the Southeastern United States using generative AI architecture wanted to focus on streamlining employees' access to customer service materials, as well as HR policies and training. Generative AI will help enhance the user experience by creating a more advanced interface for connecting and communicating, improve strategic memory management and introduce event-driven data updates to manage changes at scale.
Considering how generative AI can assist employees and expand their capabilities, the potential for efficiency, productivity savings, and operational cost reductions is significant, while also boosting customer satisfaction. Generative AI has the potential to reinvent how employees work and how customers feel – something that should not be overlooked, as consumers are key to driving trends such as those associated with the energy transition.
Investment in human capital
Success with generative AI requires as much attention on people and training as it does on the technology itself. Business leaders must lead the change, starting now, in job redesign, task redesign and reskilling people to make this a new reality. Companies should prioritize their investment in talent to address two distinct challenges: creating AI and using it. This means developing technical competencies such as AI engineering and enterprise architecture to train people across the organization to work effectively and efficiently with AI-infused processes.
This was the case at a U.S. West Coast utility, where we have helped build a secure web platform powered by Azure’s GPT models. This required educating employees about the technology, testing, and developing use cases to iterate and improve the platform over time. The positive impact of generative AI on human creativity and productivity will be massive. Language tasks, such as conversations with customers via phone calls and emails, account for 62% of the total time employees work, and 65% of that time can be transformed into more productive activity through augmentation and automation, according to our research.
Getting us closer to energy transition goals
Generative AI is more than a new piece of technology; it will transform work today and reinvent the utility business tomorrow, helping utilities meet energy transition goals.
The good news is that there’s value on the table right now. In the first wave of transformation, generative AI promises to enhance the customer experience and regulatory performance and help bridge the talent gap. Advances today will help us all set and achieve new performance frontiers tomorrow for a low-carbon energy system.