What role can artificial intelligence play in shaping the future of energy systems? In this episode, Dr. Aidan Rhodes, Research Fellow at Imperial College London and Energy Policy Briefing Papers Fellow at Energy Futures Lab, explores the intersection of AI and energy with two expert guests:

Francesco Leofante, Imperial College Research Fellow, affiliated with the Centre for Explainable Artificial Intelligence. Francesco’s work focuses on safe and explainable AI, particularly counterfactual explanations and their robustness.

Daniel Lewis, Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology Fellow and author of the Energy Security and AI policy briefing paper. Daniel examines AI applications in energy systems, associated challenges, and key policy considerations for the future.

In This Episode:

- The potential solutions and opportunities for AI within energy systems

- The challenges and risks of integrating AI into the energy sector

- How AI could help accelerate the transformation of energy systems for net zero

YouTube Chapters:

00:00:00 - Introduction to the Energy Futures Podcast

00:01:02 - Meet the Guests: Francesco Leofante and Daniel Lewis

00:03:15 - How AI Can Transform Energy Systems

00:08:10 - Safe and Explainable AI in Energy

00:15:45 - Policy Insights: Energy Security and AI

00:21:20 - Challenges of Integrating AI in Energy Systems

00:29:30 - Counterfactual Explanations and AI Transparency

00:37:00 - AI and Grid Flexibility for Net Zero

00:44:15 - Key Policy Considerations for AI Adoption in Energy

00:50:30 - Closing Thoughts and Where to Learn More

Guest Bios:

Dr. Aidan Rhodes

Dr. Rhodes is a Research Fellow at Imperial College London and the Energy Policy Briefing Papers Fellow at Energy Futures Lab. He prepares accessible briefing papers for energy sector policymakers, focusing on topics like digitalization, smart energy systems, and national energy innovation.

Aidan’s links

Imperial profile: https://profiles.imperial.ac.uk/aidan.rhodes

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aidan-rhodes-06b16030/?originalSubdomain=uk

Francesco Leofante

Francesco is an Imperial College Research Fellow at the Centre for Explainable Artificial Intelligence. He leads the ConTrust project, a four-year initiative to study robustness in explainable AI. His work delves into safe and transparent AI applications.

Francesco’s links

Imperial profile: https://profiles.imperial.ac.uk/f.leofante

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/francescoleofante/?originalSubdomain=uk

Website: https://fraleo.github.io/

Daniel Lewis

Daniel is a Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) Fellow and author of the Energy Security and AI policy briefing paper. He transitioned into this role from his anthropology PhD research at Durham University, which focused on primate host-microbiome coevolution.

Daniel’s links

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-lewis-bio/

POST Paper Energy security and AI: https://post.parliament.uk/research-briefings/post-pn-0735/

Additional Links

Smart Meter Paper: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/energy-futures-lab/reports/briefing-papers/paper-9/

https://www.neso.energy/what-we-do/data-ai

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federated_learning

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_Nuclear_Generating_Station

https://viso.ai/deep-learning/computer-vision-tasks/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_language_model