加拿大电力行业人工智能之道

Fall 2025 Table of Contents About Electricity Canada3 The Dao of artificial intelligence in the Canadian electricity industry About Electricity Canada About Electricity Canada: Founded in 1891, Electricity Canada (formerly the Canadian Electricity Association) is the national forum and voice ofthe evolving and innovative electricity business in Canada. The Association supports, through its advocacy efforts,the regional, national, and international success of its members. Electricity Canada members generate, transmit, anddistribute electrical energy to industrial, commercial, residential, and institutional customers across Canada. Membersinclude integrated electric utilities, independent power producers, transmission and distribution companies, powermarketers, and system operators, who together deliver electricity to all Canadians, in every province and territory. The Dao of artificial intelligence in the Canadian electricity industry Executive summary Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a powerful driver of innovation and efficiency in the modern businesslandscape. Organizations across all industries invest heavily in AI technologies, hoping to leverage their potential toenhance productivity, optimize operations, and create new business opportunities. This paper, developed through conversations with members of Electricity Canada’s Technology Committee, thecreation of Electricity Canada’s annual technology trends reports, and additional research into laws and regulationson AI, aims to inform the industry of the opportunities and challenges it faces when it comes to artificial intelligence.It also seeks to inform governments and regulators that AI is here to stay and must be carefully considered in systemintegration. AI is a solution that enables creative change within the electricity industry and establishes operational andcost efficiencies in an era of inflation, tariff threats, supply chain constraints and human resource shortages. Integrating AI into the industry for grid management, renewable energy integration, and more, will require guardrailsthat speak to security, education, innovation, validation, and integrity. These applications, whether customer-facing,operational, or regulatory, will require continued monitoring and evaluation to measure their effectiveness. Although Canada was the first nation to adopt an artificial intelligence strategy, it lags behind 20 OECD countries interms of adoption. The Canadian government can streamline regulations and promote adoption within Canada throughfunding, cooperation, education, and regulation to ensure Canadian competitiveness across all industries. No artificial intelligence applications were used in content development for this paper. Introduction and background AI will become an inevitable tool in the electricity industry as applications are piloted across departments. Privacyand safeguarding customer information will be critical in future offerings. However, they will only be successful if thetechnology and processes that govern that technology are transparent and ethical. Conversations across multiple Electricity Canada committees, councils, and working groups have raised the questionof AI’s application in their line of business. Different groups have explored the use AI in call centres, operations, reliability,data load management, accounting, data privacy, regulatory, enterprise architecture, and more. These discussionsraise even more questions about AI usage, governance, ownership, general applicability, and interoperability with othersystems. “Energy Hog”: The power demands of AI (and why we’re not talking about it) AI is the primary driver for increased energy demand from data centres. The amount of electricity used to poweran AI script is up to 10 times more than a traditional internet search engine request, depending on the complexityof the request. Over time, with improved coding and new hardware systems, the amount of energy is expected to decreaseper AI request. Still, the number of AI systems will increase in usage across all lines of business as governmentpolicies catch up to the new technology and comfort levels increase in its widespread adoption. As with many new technologies, there are implications for its adoption. However, this is out of the scope of thispaper, which will focus instead on recommendations on operating guardrails for utilizing AI systems in industry,government, and regulation. Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) represents a new era of AI technologies characterized by their ability tolearn, adapt, and make decisions in real-time. AI systems can analyze vast datasets, optimize processes, and enhancedecision-making across various industries. Gen AI’s natural language processing capabilities allow users with little tono computer expertise to produce content, images, computer code, searches and perform other many other functionsthat can add value across a value chain and business operatio