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Many people who have increasingly despaired at the adverse effects of changing climate have probably mused: Why cant we go completely green? Why are fossil fuels so hard to quit? The answers, as usual, are legion: Renewable energy is too expensive, too unreliable, too undeveloped and fossil fuels lack a suitable substitute. All of these reasons contain a modicum of truth. But our biggest challenge remains lack of political will because lowering our reliance on fossil fuels requires dedicated investments that provide uncertain, long-term benefits.

Indeed, scientists have continued making remarkable progress in ironing out one of the biggest kinks of clean energy: The intermittent and unpredictable nature of renewable energy.

Now, researchers have come up with yet another solution to make renewable energy more dependable: Renewable Energy trading platforms that leverage AI and blockchain technology.

Dutch scientists have successfully developed Distro, a solar and battery storage-based microgrid trading platform underpinned by blockchain distributed ledger technology and AI.

Distro is both good for the goose and the gander: The platform has demonstrated double-digit reductions in energy costs for customers as well as comparable revenue improvement for renewable energy producers.

High-frequency energy trading

The Distro Platform, developed by S&P Global Platts and Blocklab Rotterdam to support energy trading at very high frequencies, uses blockchain smart contracts to ensure all transactions are validated and immutable.

Distro is a high-frequency microgrid energy trading platform that leverages AI and blockchain by optimizing supply and ensuring it meets consumer demand in a highly granular manner. This is reflected in rapid changes in local energy prices. In other words, Distro incentivizes lower consumption during periods of low energy generation by lowering prices during high generation periods.

Related: The Geopolitical Power Of The Shale Revolution Is Fading

During the trial, Distro enabled an 11% reduction of energy costs for end-users while also boosting revenues by 14% for energy producers as well as increasing battery storage returns on investment by 20%.

Yet another benefit: Distro is able to significantly lower wastage, with 92% of all solar power generated in the dock consumed by local businesses.

In other words, everybody wins with Distro.

AI Powering a Clean Energy Revolution

Distro is not the first platform to demonstrate that cutting-edge technologies such as AI and blockchain can be deployed to significantly improve the reliability of renewable energy sources such as solar and wind.

From utilities employing AI and machine learning to predict power fluctuations and cost optimization to companies using IoT sensors for early fault detection and wildfire powerline/gear monitoring, here are real-life cases of how these bleeding edge technologies continue to power an energy revolution even during the pandemic.

#1. Innowatts: Energy monitoring and management The Covid-19 crisis has triggered an unprecedented decline in power consumption. Not only has overall consumption fallen but there have also been major shifts in power usage patterns, with sharp decreases by businesses and industries while domestic use has increased as more people work from home.

Houston, Texas-based Innowatts, is a startup that has developed an automated toolkit for energy monitoring and management. The companys eUtility platform ingests data from more than 34 million smart energy meters across 21 million customers, including major U.S. utility companies such as Arizona Public Service Electric, Portland General Electric, Avangrid, Gexa Energy, WGL, and Mega Energy. Innowatts says its machine learning algorithms are able to analyze the data to forecast several critical data points, including short- and long-term loads, variances, weather sensitivity, and more.

Related: The Energy Sectors Most Threatened By A Biden Presidency

Innowatts estimates that without its machine learning models, utilities would have seen inaccuracies of 20% or more on their projections at the peak of the crisis, thus placing enormous strain on their operations and ultimately driving up costs for end-users.

#2. Google: Boosting the value of wind energy

A while back, we reported that proponents of nuclear energy were using the pandemic to highlight its strong points vis-a-vis the short-comings of renewable energy sources. To wit, wind and solar are the least predictable and consistent among the major energy sources, while nuclear and natural gas boast the highest capacity factors.

Well, one tech giant has figured out how to employ AI to iron out those kinks.

Three years ago, Google announced that it had reached 100% renewable energy for its global operations, including its data centers and offices. Today, Google is the largest corporate buyer of renewable power, with commitments totaling 2.6 gigawatts (2,600 megawatts) of wind and solar energy.

In 2017, Google teamed up with IBM to search for a solution to the highly intermittent nature of wind power. Using IBMs DeepMind AI platform, Google deployed ML algorithms to 700 megawatts of wind power capacity in the central United States--enough to power a medium-sized city.

IBM says that by using a neural network trained on widely available weather forecasts and historical turbine data, DeepMind is now able to predict wind power output 36 hours ahead of actual generation. Consequently, this has boosted the value of Googles wind energy by roughly 20 percent.

A similar model can be used by other wind farm operators to make smarter, faster, and more data-driven optimizations of their power output to better meet customer demand.

IBMs DeepMind uses trained neural networks to predict wind power output 36 hours ahead of actual generation

Source: DeepMind

#3. Wildfire powerline and gear monitoring

In June, Californias biggest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, found itself in deep trouble. PG&E pleaded guilty for the tragic 2018 wildfire accident that left 84 people dead and, consequently, was slapped with hefty penalties of $13.5 billion as compensation to people who lost homes and businesses and another $2 billion fine by the California Public Utilities Commission for negligence.

Needless to say, its going to be a long climb back to the top for the fallen giant after its stock crashed nearly 80% following the disaster despite the company emerging from bankruptcy in July.

Perhaps the loss of lives and livelihood could have been averted if PG&E had invested in some AI-powered early detection system.

One such system is being worked on by a startup called VIA, based in Somerville, Massachusetts. VIA says it has developed a blockchain-based app that can predict when vulnerable power transmission gear such as transformers might be at risk in a disaster. VIAs app makes better use of energy data sources, including smart meters or equipment inspections.

Another comparable product comes from Korean firm Alchera which uses AI-based image recognition in combination with thermal and standard cameras to monitor power lines and substations in real-time. The AI system is trained to watch the infrastructure for any abnormal events such as falling trees, smoke, fire, and even intruders.

Other than utilities, oil and gas producers have also been integrating AI into their operations. These include:

By Alex Kimani for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:

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How AI And Blockchain Are Driving The Energy Transition - OilPrice.com

NOT a few times, there have been comments on my columns castigating me for referring to the the Yellows or Dilawans, saying that this is an unfair labeling of those who dont agree with my views.

To be honest, I think the term is fitting to this political group, Yellow being a synonym for cowardice (yellow-bellied), duplicity (yellow unions), or the worst kind of media (Yellow tabloids). Even its translation Dilawan rolls in the tongue as a term for the hateful as much as kawatan.

However, I use the term with some precision, as shorthand for a set of beliefs now held by, well, going by the recent Pulse Asia survey, 3 percent of Filipinos. (That is, the percent that mistrusts President Duterte, the nemesis of the Yellows, with 5 percent disapproving of his performance.)

Cory enthralled by Sison, who isnt really Red. PHOTO FROM INTERNET COMMONS

The Yellow tag is as convenient, I think, as labels such as Democrat (with a capital D), or liberal democrat, or Marxist although one has to provide specific, strong arguments why such persons views on a particular issue are wrong. The labels simply help in explaining why they have such particular views.

For example, if I label somebody as a Marxist in the course of discussing his view of higher tax rates for the rich, it is helpful to explain that he is of the view that the State must find a way of channeling capitalist profits (surplus value) into funds to uplift the conditions of the rest of the population, mainly workers.

DistinctiveThe Yellow mind is unique but distinctive that it deserves an anatomy. I consider Yellow a person who embraces at least two of the following ideas, and the more of these he believes in, the deeper is his yellowness.

1. The Marcos era was a totally dark period of our history, with nothing good whatsoever in it. He was simply a dictator who relished one-man rule, nothing more. His record on human rights and kleptocracy is the worst of any Philippine president ever.

2. Cory Aquino was a saint of democracy who with Gods (or the Virgin Marys) help rescued the country from dictatorship and ushered in a democratic regime.

3. Her son Benigno Aquino 3rd was as upright as she, and his administration was one of the best in Philippine history.

4. Dutertes is an authoritarian regime, nearly a fascist one. He is the political reincarnation of Marcos, and his administration is a bad one, even the worst.

Try using this schema in judging the politics of mainstream newspapers. The Philippine Daily Inquirer and Rappler are deep Yellow, while the Philippine Star appears to me as embracing only No. 2 in the above list in recent years. The Manila Bulletin (because of its silence) and this newspaper arent, although one or two columnists seem to embrace No. 1 and No. 4.

CartoonistOur editorial page cartoonist, Im starting to believe, is Yellow. US medias default framework is Yellow, mainly because they really dont bother to do research on what they think is the most unimportant country in Asia.

Ateneo de Manila University, De La Salle University and, of course, the University of the Philippines purportedly our most advanced academic institutions are deep Yellow, or at least their leadership are. This is such a tragedy, as they have the intellectual and research tools to determine that the Yellow beliefs are false, the usual product of a situation in which the ruling elite has control of media.

I dont think theres a similar situation in other countries academic world, a testament to their universities intellectual rigor. Harvard, Yale, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology arent labeled as Democratic or Republican, nor Oxford and Cambridge as Conservative or Labor.

China-haters Albert del Rosario and Antonio Carpio are undoubtedly Yellow. Only a president as reckless, stupid, or malleable as Aquino 3rd would have allowed the Philippines to be used by the US to file a suit against the American rival for hegemony.

Carpio in his long e-book or in any of his many speeches couldnt even get himself to point out that we are in the Spratlys because of Marcos who annexed that huge territory in the South China Sea as part of the Philippines, called the Kalayaan Island Group.

ChinaTheir project of demonizing China through the arbitration suit is a Yellow project. Enough of it.

I dont include the following false beliefs as elements of the Yellow ideology, although Yellows usually subscribe to the following beliefs:

a) The US has been and will be our big brother, while China is the new Evil Empire, plotting to dominate Asia.

b) The Communist Party, the New Peoples Army and its fronts are fighting against the masses exploitation by the ruling elites. Paradoxically though, most Yellows are worshipers of capitalism, as if it has been and always been the Supreme Deity.

c) Defending human rights is the most important duty of the State, more important than liberating the masses from poverty, and ensuring their security and well-being.

What is strange is that the oligarch-backed Yellow thinking is also that of the Communist Party, using my schema described above. Or maybe not so strange: the Yellow martyr Benigno Aquino, Jr. coddled Communist Party founder Jose Ma. Sison. His widow Cory freed him without even a formal pardon of his conviction for murder and subversion by a court, even if it was a military court had not been challenged for its legitimacy.

I have started to believe that Sisons Marxism is only for show: His ideology is really, and in practice, the Yellow framework. That Marcos was a bloody fascist dictator is an overarching dogma in Sisons mind, especially if it was during martial law when the communists reached its peak of political and military strength. He was even quick to ignore the US plot to isolate China in Asia by going on an anti-Chinese tack after the Aquino regime filed the case against China.

The NPA is nothing but an armed Yellow force.

The Yellow mind has gone deep into our national psyche, as it was disseminated intensely and widely by Presidents Cory, Ramos and Aquino 3rd, and employing such powerful media as the two biggest newspapers PDI and Star and of course ABS-CBN Corp. as well as the three universities.

We would have been stuck with that false thinking if not for Duterte, who has now practically erased it from the masses minds, going by the recent Pulse Asia poll, that is.

Email: tiglao.manilatimes@gmail.comFacebook: Rigoberto TiglaoTwitter: @bobitiglaoBook orders: http://www.rigobertotiglao.com/debunked

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Defining the Yellow mind The Manila Times - The Manila Times

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Grid, the company pushing new state-of-the-art standards in AI, announced today that it has raised $18.6 million in Series A funding led by Index Ventures with participation from Bain Capital Ventures and Firstminute. Grid enables companies of all sizes to train state-of-the-art AI models on hundreds of cloud GPUs and TPUs. Grids breakthrough technology enables machine learning engineers, data scientists and AI researchers to focus on solving problems and building products at the scale available to only the most sophisticated AI companies in the world.

Grid is here to teach, train and supercharge machine learning engineers, data scientists and AI researchers, so they can work with maximum efficiency on exactly the way they want, instead of spending all their time managing hardware or solving engineering problems, said Grid cofounder William Falcon. Our main goal is for the product to be user friendly so companies dont have to worry about the machines they are running or clusters, and instead can focus on delivering value for their customers.

While doing his PhD at NYU and part-time at Facebook AI Research, Falcon created PyTorch Lightning, one of the fastest growing machine learning frameworks in the world, amassing over 600k downloads in the last 12 months. Lightning gives AI researchers, data scientists and machine learning engineers the flexibility to iterate on research ideas faster without needing to be expert research engineers. Lightning is used by 400+ organizations, ranging from small startups to Fortune 500 companies and many top academic and AI research labs. Falcon and Grid cofounder Luis Capelo, who most recently served as the head of Machine Learning at Glossier, saw an opportunity to use PyTorch Lightning to reduce the distance between deep learning research and its practice in real-life businesses. With this $18.6 million investment, they are building Grid's core technologies and growing Grid's New York-based team.

PyTorch Lightnings core innovation is around decoupling all the code that is required to define a full deep learning model from all the code that is required to run on hardwarein short, pivoting the focus away from the engineering and into solving the science and business problems. Grid's approach has been so successful that other projects such as Keras, Tensorflow and Huggingface have adopted similar paradigms in their own frameworks. As a platform for training models, Grid extends the power of PyTorch Lightning and makes it possible for any company to have access to state-of-the-art AI services on par with those of Google and Facebook.

The unique combination of the explosive popularity of PyTorch Lightning and the deep technical expertise of Grids founding team will enable Grid to have a profound impact on the ability of all companies, regardless of resources, to take advantage of cutting edge machine learning technology, said Sarah Cannon of Index Ventures.

Falcon, originally from Venezuela, underwent the US Navys Basic Underwater Demolitions SEAL (BUD/S) training where he was injured and finished his service at Special Reconnaissance Team One (SRT-1) as an intelligence officer. After the military, he attended Columbia University to study math, statistics and computer science. After graduating, he joined Goldman Sachs and left after the first year to found a startup called NextGenVest that helps 1st generation students pay for college using state-of-the-art NLP to scale conversations. After NextGenVests acquisition, William started a PhD program at NYU in Deep Learning focused on self-supervised learning, advised by Kyunghyun Cho and Yann LeCun. His PhD is funded by Google DeepMind and NSF.

Capelos work as a Staff Data Scientist contributed to Glossier's $1.2B valuation, creating data products that helped generate $100M+ in revenue by mid 2019. Luis is the creator of Bertie AI, an artificial intelligence system that doubled the number of Forbes's monthly active users and created a new record for the total number of visitors to forbes.com. Luis is also the co-creator of the Humanitarian Data Exchange, the world's largest repository for humanitarian data. He is a native of Havana, Cuba and holds an MA from Harvard / MIT on Science and Technology Policy & Statistics..

About Grid

Grid enables companies of all sizes to train state-of-the-art AI models on hundreds of cloud GPUs and TPUs from their laptops. From the creator of the popular framework PyTorch Lightning, Grid is a platform for training models that enables rapid research iteration. Grid aims to simplify scalable AI research so that when a network becomes complex, code doesnt. Focus on machine learning, not infrastructure.

Grid is backed by $18.6 million from Index Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures and Firstminute, with advisors and investors that include technology and machine learning visionary Kyunghyun Cho, and Lee Fixel, among others. Grid is based in New York and was founded by Wiliam Falcon and Luis Capelo.

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Grid AI, From the Makers of PyTorch Lightning, Emerges From Stealth With $18.6m Series A to Close the Gap Between AI Research and Production -...

by Liz Covey, LMHC

Question: I think this year might kill me. What can I do to survive the seemingly never-ending onslaught of bad news?

Dear Reader,

Water imagery abounds in therapy practice these days.

I cant seem to keep my head above water, says one client. I feel like Im drowning with work plus having the kids home from school says another. A third says, I feel like a tsunami came and swept away everything that I genuinely enjoyed about my life.

So when I was reflecting on your succinct and timely question, Reader, something a client said recently came instantly to mind, giving me direction for how to respond. He said: All I can do lately is try to stay afloat.

Due to the catastrophic events of this year, my practice has utterly changed. It has become completely immersed in grief, a thing that is often present in this field, though not completely dominant like it is right now. During times of grief, we dwell for a while in the realm of deep, existential truths, and we work more directly with symbol and metaphor. These days that means talking a lot about deep and dangerous waters.

In normal times, therapy related to grief is based on the theory that help comes more easily from a person who is not experiencing the loss, and who can assist the sufferer back to the safe shore of a regulated, and increasingly pleasant life. The grieving person regains a small bit of that safe shore a little at a time, until eventually there is once again a sense of normalcy.

But now this grief is felt by everyone, and in a sweeping and sustained way. As you say, Reader, there is an onslaught of bad news, or in keeping with this metaphor, I might say a flood. One that seems to get worse with every passing week. This leaves therapists everywhere asking: how can we help our clients when there is no identified safe shore? When we too are in this grievous mess? And when there is no end in sight?

No one ever told me that grief would feel so much like fear, wrote C.S. Lewis in A Grief Observed, a memoir about the death of his wife. I think of this quote often these days, because what we are experiencing now is mountainous, collective grief, and not the kind that tends to make us weepy. Rather, as Lewis describes in detail, so much of grief feels like being rattled and is devastating. Sure, there is sadness. But there is also abundant fear.

Owing to the magnitude of everything fear-inducing that is afoot today with a pandemic, an environmental disaster, a long-overdue racial justice movement, and economic chaos, I have decided to follow the metaphor through, and to see our plight in this time to be a literal encounter with dangerous, choppy waters at the brink of disaster. Why? Because this is how I experience people are living it.

But Ive grown tired of making lists detailing how to cope with the tough emotions during these legitimately terrifying times. Fortified by the bad-assery of having been a frontline emotional worker through the whole of this thing (and were still in the beginning, I suspect), I choose to run headlong into the dangerous waters, armed with some survival skills. It seems clear to me that our task these days is not to thrive, exactly, but only to prevent ourselves from drowning in the hellishness in our midst.

All I can do lately is try to stay afloat. Amen to that.

As I turned toward resources specific to water safety, I was surprised to find a considerable amount of common ground with counseling psychology. Survival guides for drowning prevention, in fact, could almost read as therapy manuals on grief. But dont take my word for it.

In his book 100 Deadly Skills, retired Navy SEAL Clint Emerson wrote about how to prevent drowning by using some of the following guidelines. Heres the advice I ran across from him, as well as the Red Cross and U.S. Centers for Disease Control, that is pertinent to water safety and which seems to sufficiently mirror our mental health needs in order to survive this doozy of a year:

Go Prepared, and Dont Go Alone. Make sure you have all of your needed supplies and equipment such as life jacketslifejackets and flares (or more appropriately, face masks and hand sanitizer). Meeting practical needs is essential. It is also important to have a swim buddy, so that you have someone to count on if the conditions become rough.

Dont Panic. A key to surviving a risky water encounter is to avoid flailing about, which leads to hyperventilation, a key factor in drowning deaths. Some survival tips to avoid hyperventilation are to focus on your breath and cue your rational mind to the importance of remaining calm and in the present moment. If this is difficult, try calming your body: tread water or take rhythmic, slow and strong swimming strokes. You might also try floating on your back to initiate relaxation.

Its All About the Breath, and Buoyancy. Emerson notes that buoyancy is the key thing to strive for when one is stranded in open water. To achieve this, he recommends filling your lungs to make floating easier. Keeping yourself oxygenated in a regulated way is advised.

Avoid Alcohol. Swimmers need to minimize or eliminate anything that impairs judgment for what might be needed in times of duress.

Dont Get Complacent. Remember that water poses danger, so we do well to remain awake to our environment, to current conditions, and to our needs. Use good judgment, and skew on the side of low-risk activity.

The approach I am advocating to get through this godawful year, Reader, is one of mere survival. We do well in times of abject crisis to aim for what is possible, and for what we can realistically achieve. Today that is to keep our heads above the water line. We can aim for more as the tides turn, and the pressure of today is relieved in the weeks or months to come.

To draw on my clients words in closing is to point out that he mentioned floating, an activity that I saw recommended in many of these guides as a tip for both survival and for emotional stability in a catastrophic event.

Float, dont swim, the guides advise. It reserves energy and induces calm.

Sounds about right to me.

Counselors Roy Fisher and Liz Covey answer readers questions for the South Seattle Emeralds Ask a Therapist. Have a question about a relationship? Wondering about the struggles of being a parent? Others likely have the same questions and Covey and Fisher bring years of professional experience to provide their insights.

If you have a question, please click here and let us know. We will select two questions each month to answer. The form requires no email address or identification and is completely anonymous. If you are in crisis or in immediate need of care, please contact Crisis Connections at 1-866-427-4747.

Featured Image: Walking The Ledge Part IV by StarMama is licensed under CC BY 2.0. View a copy of this license here.

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Ask a Therapist: How Not to Drown in the Deluge of the Negativity That Is 2020 - southseattleemerald.com