RWE bets on HPE Private Cloud AI for green energy push

Renewable energy supplier RWE is tapping into HPE’s private cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies so it can use weather data more efficiently to predict changes in energy supply and demand.

German multi-national RWE is a major developer of renewable energy in the UK, operating a mix of wind, hydro and biomass generation sites around the country that it claims are capable of powering around 12 million homes.

The company will deploy the HPE Private Cloud AI infrastructure, which is a scalable, pre-tested stack equipped with Nvidia’s AI compute capabilities, to bolster its ability to analyse and model weather data.

It also features HPE GreenLake cloud capabilities to help the RWE team manage and observe the infrastructure with ease, automate processes, and orchestrate endpoints, workloads and data, including sustainability metrics, said HPE.

The setup is an on-premise offering that HPE said will allow RWE’s researchers to quickly scale in line with their compute demands across the different geographies the company operates in.

“As a leading provider of renewable energy, RWE is at the forefront of balancing the increasing power demands of the modern world with the societal challenge of protecting the climate,” said Simon Tarplee, head of commercial AI at RWE Supply and Trading.

“We see AI as a key enabler that allows us to optimise our processes and create new, sustainable solutions, and set the ambitious goal to have a production training capable solution in place by the end of 2024.”

Tarplee continued: “With HPE Private Cloud AI, we will have a turnkey solution that helps us to improve our forecast accuracy and optimise energy resource management globally.”

News of the deployment comes more than three years after RWE went public with its Growing Green investment and growth programme, which has seen the firm commit to investing €55bn worldwide in wind, solar, hydrogen, flexible energy and storage projects.

The programme is geared towards helping accelerate the energy transition and decarbonisation efforts in the main countries the company operates, which include Germany, the US and the UK.

The company has also set itself a target of becoming a net-zero entity by 2040 with the help of AI, with RWE describing “weather modelling” as being a top priority in this process.

“The ability to fine-tune and inference AI-driven weather models will be a key enabler to unlock higher efficiencies for RWE’s renewable energy portfolio and will give them a significant competitive advantage in the market,” said Fidelma Russo, HPE chief technology officer, and executive vice-president and general manager for hybrid cloud.

“HPE Private Cloud AI is a unique turnkey solution that enables RWE’s researchers to reach the market quicker and handle massive datasets.”