Shell, Baker Hughes and Microsoft have launched the Open AI Energy Initiative (OAI), described as a ‘first-of-its-kind’ open ecosystem of artificial intelligence (AI)-based solutions for the energy and process industries. OAI will provide a framework for operators, service providers, OEMs and ISVs to offer interoperable, AI and physics-based solutions for plant monitoring and optimization. OpenAI builds on the BHC3 AI Suite running in the Microsoft Azure cloud.
BHC3 is a joint venture between Baker Hughes and C3.ai whose CEO Tom Siebel commented ‘This initiative is about combining the efforts of global leaders to accelerate the digital transformation of the energy industry to new, safe, and secure energy and to ensure climate security’.
OAI has been seeded with some reliability solutions developed by Shell in-house. These cover predictive maintenance for control valves, rotating equipment and electrical submersible pumps. The Shell-developed modules will integrate BHC3 Applications including BHC3 Reliability, Production Optimization and Inventory Optimization.
Back in 2018, Shell selected C3 IoT with Microsoft Azure as its AI platform of choice for operations. In 2019, they were joined by Baker Hughes in the formation of an alliance to ‘accelerate the digital transformation of the energy industry’.
The latest addition to the BHC3 software lineup is PSO, a Production Schedule Optimization app, described as ‘an enterprise AI application for industrial demand planning and manufacturing production scheduling’. The downstream app has been trialed with a large hydrocarbon processor that, in a 16-week trial, ‘achieved a 20% improvement in demand forecasting accuracy by automatically generating optimal production schedules’.
We were curious to know if OAI had any relationship with the
Shell-backed OSDU open subsurface data universe. Especially because an
OSDU scope-shift into the plant/process arena was mooted last year as
the ‘Open Energy Data Platform’. We
pinged Shell whose spokesperson replied, ‘There is no connection
between OSDU Data Platform and the Open AI initiative; OSDU is the Open
Energy Data Platform supporting all Energy Sources and Open AI is
targeted at the developments of AI (such as predictive) applications
for assets, etc.’
More on the Open AI Energy Initiative from BakerHughes/C3.
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