A New AI Weather Model Is Already Changing How Energy Is Traded
The European forecasting center’s system is poised to help power and gas traders make quicker moves in markets convulsed by climate change.
A wind turbine in Zaragoza, Spain. A new AI model from a European forecasting center is poised to help predict renewable energy output.
Photographer: Angel Garcia/BloombergAt midnight every day in Bologna, Italy, rows of supercomputers inside a former tobacco factory start churning through millions of measurements to predict how the Earth’s weather will change.
Six hours later, energy traders all over Europe rise and refresh their browsers to get the most updated outlook. Those mainframe-generated forecasts are often the biggest factor helping them make money by knowing where and when to move energy around the power grid — but a new model that runs on artificial intelligence is threatening to make them obsolete.