Researchers at the University of Texas Dallas have teamed up with engineers at New York’s University at Buffalo to develop an artificial intelligence model that has the potential to help power grids prevent outages by automatically rerouting electricity in milliseconds.
Through test network scenarios, researchers effectively demonstrated that their solution has the ability to automatically identify alternative routes to transfer electricity to users — before an outage occurs.
“The approach is an early example of ‘self-healing grid’ technology, which uses AI to detect and repair problems such as outages autonomously and without human intervention when issues occur, such as storm-damaged power lines,” wrote Kim Horner, University of Texas at Dallas communications manager, in a statement.
According to the paper’s co-author Roshni Anna Jacob, if electricity is blocked due to line faults, the system can reconfigure and draw power from available sources it is close to, including large-scale solar panels and batteries. “You can leverage those power generators to supply electricity in a specific area,” Jacob said.
After working on strategies to prevent outages, researchers will shift focus to develop similar technology to repair and restore the grid after a major power disruption.
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