Josh Wong, CEO of ThinkLabs AI, responds to host Shayle Kann's hypothesis that AI may offer less ceiling for improvement in utility operations compared to planning.
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Wong: ThinkLabs cuts nine-month grid interconnection studies to under 10 minutes
“So studies that would take previously nine months, right, as I mentioned, interconnection studies, now it takes us only a matter of a couple of minutes, like 10 minutes or less.”
Opinion
Wong: The grid has enough latent capacity for most data centers today
“So let me just make a statement here, which is, I believe the grid has enough existing latent capacity to connect the majority, if not all of the data centers today.”
Assertion Supported
Wong: Transmission interconnection studies take 6-9 months and cost $250K
“I think most utilities are talking about six to nine months to perform one of those studies, and it's a one-time, right, so risk of restudies will compound that, and it does cost internal utility, typically a hundred, A couple of 100,000 dollars. The typical b…”
Assertion Partly supported
Wong: SCE projects up to 10,000 monthly energization requests taking 30-45 days
“I think when we public study that we did with SCE, I think they are projecting like up to 10,000 of these energization requests per month, and each one of them takes like 30 to 45 days.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Wong: ThinkLabs' physics-informed AI models are deterministic and cannot hallucinate
“So our models actually can't hallucinate. It's actually deterministic. You ask it the same thing, it will give you the same answer all the time.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Wong: ThinkLabs trains state-sized utility models in 10 minutes for $5
“And we have done that for multiple large IOUs now, a couple of thousand buses, it takes us about 10 minutes per training run. For a Powerflow model the size of a state, typically. And that 10 minute training run cost maybe five bucks of compute. And we were ab…”