From independence to interconnection — A review of AI technology applied in energy systems

The development of diversified energy structures, distributed energy scheduling models and active participation ability of users, leads to a rapid movement toward energy system in which different energy carriers and systems interact together in a synergistic way. This energy development will face many challenges with the requirements of big data processing capability, professional skill, distributed collaboration and realtime monitoring for the energy system that demands an intelligent and flexible tool to realize the smart energy. Artificial intelligence (AI) technology has become a focus because of its better performance. This paper proposed a classification method that incorporates the intelligence of an independent energy unit (IEU) and the intelligence among interconnected energy units (IEUS) to review the development of AI technology in energy systems. The dominant structures of IEU can be considered from three aspects including perception, decision and implementation to study the optimal strategy for AI methods utilized in IEU. And considering the interaction relationship of IEUS, the AI applied for it can be described by the coordinated relationship and adversarial relationship problems to achieve consensus. By discussing the AI technologies and the potentials of AI in the energy system, some suggestions are presented to improve intelligent technologies for sustainable energy systems in the future.