Energy Production Complexity
Quantum Options for Production Optimization
In today´s post, we´ll talk about Quantum Computing Opportunities in the Energy Industry, finalizing with the opportunity windows for industries in Chile and applications for current challenges.
Quantum Computing is causing a great deal of hype lately, in part for the expectations for this technology to tackle complex problems, and while Quantum Computers were envision to tackle Quantum phenomena analysis, there are growing opportunities to extend the potential of quantum computing for several complex systems can be represented or matched to Quantum Mechanics, thus providing advantage in facing several combinatorial problems that require way too much computing power with the current standards for classical computing bits.
Optimization is a great area to find uses and value from quantum computers, for optimization ubiquity can translate into several industries as business opportunities.
Actually, nowadays there are several corporations already trying and challenging new research for usage and applications for Quantum Computing. Just to name some interesting examples of this in the manufacturing industry, checkout the campaigns from Volkswagen (route optimization piloting D-Wave) and BMW (BMW Quantum Challange partnering AWS)
Adding to this recent cases, we can also find Enel also trying to find applications from Quantum Computing. In recent explorations and researches, Enel has been partnering with AWS to gain experience and find application like Combinatorial Optimizations, identifing an optimal plan for assigning maintenance work to teams. The use of the D-Wave quantum machine and the AWS Cloud was also tested in order to verify that these “Quantum Inspired” algorithms can be used on today’s Quantum devices.
Chile poses a great playground to find new applications in Quantum Computing. Let´s focus in the Energy production industry. Get some context first.
source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-stacked
Energy Matrix has been changing rapidly towards renewable and green sources of energy, and Chile is putting a great deal of effort into it. In its famous presentation, Al Gore, highlighted the efforts and plans of Chile to grow into green energy production sources: from +400MW in 2014, moving to +800MW in 2016, year where Gore forecasted a growth towards +13 GW in upcoming years. Interestingly enough, currently Chile as surpassed more than double of those forecasts, reaching 31,3 GWs, where productions costs have lowered the $30 usd/MWh. The implications of providing optimizations in the energy production process can make the Return on Investment (ROI) real quick from piloting optimization scenarios
In a recent paper, called “Quantum Computing for energy systems optimization” researchers from Cornell Univerity explore some scenarios where quantum computing can provide actual improvements. Testing IBM’s gate model and D-Wave’s quantum annealers, comparing performance between DWave 2000Q and Gurobi solver, they found promissing results in the facility-location allocation problem, where the goal is to find optimum locations of facilities such as solar or wind power farms that minimize facility opening and transportation cost for given energy demand and resource availability. Locations of facilities such as solar or wind power generation systems or hydro power plant can be determined based on minimization of facility opening costs, energy transportation costs subject to satisfying energy demand subject to resource availability constraints, to name some.
https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2003/2003.00254.pdf
There are some areas where Quantum Computing promise a notorious advantage, like Grid Optimization (Problems such as grid topology control, synthetic grid inertia modeling and large-scale cross-network transactive energy); Energy Asset Optimization (Offers the potential to solve seemingly impossible modeling challenges for dynamic energy systems such as heat, wind and water flow on a large scale, reducing levels of uncertainly in today’s regressive algorithms); Grid Security and Communication (cryptographic techniques using quantum key distribution and other emerging solutions to securely transmit important asset control data between nodes); Customer Analytics (Processing of large volumes of customer data injected from smart meters, buildings and online user data to make better predictions on customer needs)
The promise of quantum computing on energy system optimization also attracts a lot of attention from the energy sector. For example, in January 2019, a giant gas company ExxonMobil has signed an agreement with IBM to develop next-generation energy and manufacturing technologies using quantum computing.
In April 2019, U.S. Department of Energy announced a plan to provide $40 million USD for developing new algorithms and software for quantum computers. The same department also announced $37 million USD this month for materials and chemistry research in quantum information science.
Nature has been cautious with for Chile having access to the energy sources from the past, and generous in the energy sources from the Future. Shall this be the time to get public and private sector embracing the opportunities from one of the most radical technologies in our times. What do we need for Government partnering with Energy production companies, Technology providers (quantum hardware and software) and startups ecosystems to take the lead in making a decisive move into the technology and markets that will change our world forever … Let me know your thought in the comments section