Can you describe your project in a few words?

The objective of the AIRGo project is to build an open-source end-to-end framework for the Energy Community to develop and evaluate AI-based assistants to flexibly operate power grid for European Power Grid Operators. This platform will leverage existing open-source bricks to bring AI-assisted grid operations closer to control rooms, thanks to the use of industrial components and a validation on real-life data. The ambition is to help human power grid operators avoid blackouts in the near feature, handling fast evolving dynamics at a time of great geopolitical instability and of steep energy transition with large renewable penetration. 

Who will help implement the AI solution?

The AIRGo team is composed of two partners, Artelys (lead partner) and RTE.  

Artelys was founded in 2000 and is a French independent consulting company, specialized in optimization, data science, decision support and modelling thanks to a high-level expertise in advanced quantitative techniques such as statistics, Artificial Intelligence and solutions in optimization. Artelys operates in diversified sectors but is particularly active in the energy sector. RTE (Réseau de Transport d’Electricité) is the French Transmission System Operator (TSO) in charge of the operation, the maintenance and the development of the high and very high voltage grid (100 000km from 63 to 400kV), and also managing the interconnection lines with other European countries. RTE is the largest TSO in Europe and considers AI as one promising avenue for improving grid flexibility in real-time operations. .

What is the AI solution the project plans to implement?

The AI solution to implement will rely on two existing frameworks (Grid2Operate and PowSyBl). Grid2Operate is an open-source python framework that allows to perform powergrid operations. It is based on the OpenAI Gym standard for sequential decision-making problems with AI and is listed as a reference framework for instance here. It comes with a code Interface for connecting any physical simulator in the backend. Open-source but non-industrial physical simulators have been connected so far. On the other end, PowSyBl is an open-source industrial physical simulation framework deployed for real-time operations today in Europe. It is able to handle real-grid format and data. Implementing a bridge between PowSyBl and Grid2Op (in the Grid2Op backend standard) will make the overall framework ready for use on real-grids.