SPP Partners with Hitachi to develop AI solution for US power transmission
- June 6, 2025
Hitachi Ltd and Southwest Power Pool, Inc. (SPP) have announced a strategic partnership to solve critical and imminent problems slowing the modernization of US energy infrastructure.
The partnership will produce an integrated AI-based solution that accelerates generator interconnection (GI) by reducing study analysis times by 80 per cent while also informing faster, higher-quality decision-making by GI customers. This will markedly improve SPP’s ability to facilitate the addition of its 14-state region’s generating capacity to keep pace with increasing demand for electricity.
Data centers to lead US energy demand
US energy demands are rising by 2 to 3 percent annually, driven by data center growth, expanding manufacturing, and electrification. Data centers alone are projected to consume up to 12 percent of U.S. electricity by 2028, versus 4.4 percent in 2023. Such trends drive an alarming supply and demand gap as generating capacity margins in the SPP footprint could decline from 24 percent in 2020 to just 5 percent in 2029 unless an intervention occurs.
That intervention starts with end-to-end technical innovation, first at the point of generator interconnection. Currently, the US generates 1.28 terawatts of power. More than twice that generated amount waits in a queue as unusable backlog caused by today’s grid interconnect process. The long wait times are due to exhaustive, time-consuming analysis and simulation studies required to ensure that new energy source introductions don’t compromise existing grid reliability, stability, or performance.
Combining expertise
To address this gap, the three organizations will combine their industry and technical expertise. The partnership draws on multiple Hitachi competencies for a complete solution: Method’s design services; GlobalLogic’s software engineering services; Hitachi Energy’s energy portfolio management asset modeling solutions; Hitachi R&D’s AI-based energy grid algorithm; and Hitachi Vantara’s integrated storage and compute platform Hitachi iQ, built on NVIDIA accelerated computing, networking, and AI software.
As the regional transmission organization (RTO) framing the project, SPP will guide the integration of these technical solutions and services, leveraging its deep expertise in energy grid optimization. As a reliability coordinator prioritizing operational and customer experience improvements, SPP’s input will also ensure the project outcomes align with industry-wide requirements and regulations.
The integrated solution is an industrial AI system differentiated by its advanced proprietary AI algorithms and high performance enabled by Hitachi iQ’s enterprise AI solution stack which sit at its core. Ultimately, dynamic AI-driven technologies will be applied to various study areas, such as:
- Process automation
- Predictive analysis
- Communication systems integration
The partnership with Hitachi and NVIDIA runs parallel to other improvements underway at SPP, including a from-the-ground-up reimagining of its transmission planning processes to align them with current and future industry needs. Together, these technological and process innovations are expected to set high-water marks in the electricity industry for generator interconnection, mid- and long-term planning, long-term forecast accuracy, analysis and deployment of additional grid-enhancing technologies, and more.
Timeline
The project’s phase one milestones are expected to be completed by winter 2025/26. They include initial systems acceleration, data management processes optimization, and the introduction of AI-augmented simulation modeling among other goals.
Featured photograph [source: Southwest Power Pool (SPP)] shows an SPP Coordination Center.
