The team will work with CKDelta to deliver predictive maintenance models that can improve efficiency.

Researchers from Trinity College Dublin are collaborating with software company CKDelta to address efficiency and sustainability challenges facing the energy sector using AI.

CKDelta, which is headquartered in Dublin and part of CKI Innovations Opportunities Development (CKH IOD), is providing €865,000 in funding to support the appointment of a postdoctoral fellow and a number of PhD students, who will work on a range of research projects.

The students will be supervised by Gregory O’Hare, Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Head of Trinity’s School of Computer Science and Statistics, and the collaboration will last for a total of four years.

The collaboration aims to deliver predictive maintenance models that provide better insights for informed decision-making, rather than the current situation where maintenance is often driven by customer complaints and logging issues as they occur.

Experts from CKDelta will provide the platforms where the Trinity researchers can examine the data, as well as offer data engineering and data science support.

The research projects will fall under two main umbrellas: predictive maintenance and early warning systems.

Predictive maintenance is a data-driven approach that uses AI to monitor assets and predict when they need service or replacement. This means that maintenance can be scheduled at the optimal time, avoid unnecessary downtime, reduce operating costs and improve safety and reliability.

At the same time, early warning systems represent a set of tools and methods aimed at detecting, monitoring and predicting potential threats or disruptions to energy companies.

The research program as well aims to develop an anomaly detection system to identify near-real-time deviations from expected behaviors, which can be adapted to other situations.

Commenting on the announcement, O‘Hare saidThe scale of the challenges also means there is also “a significant opportunity” to improve sustainability and efficiency in the utility sector.

“We believe our data and AI-driven approach offers great potential to take a tangible step forward,” he said. “We hope that this collaboration will form the basis of a lasting, reliable and mutually beneficial relationship.”

Joe Parker, CEO of CKH IOD, said: “The partnership will generate new streams of knowledge transfer, with cross-pollination of skills, perspectives and specialties that might otherwise be impossible.”

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