Duke Energy collaborates with AWS to develop smart grid solutions to better serve customers and drive its clean energy transition

News provided by

Nov 17, 2022, 10:19 ET

Duke Energy will build new smart grid software and services on AWS and expand its Intelligent Grid Services – a suite of custom-built applications that help the utility anticipate future energy demand and identify where and how to update the power grid.
AWS will build out the cloud technologies needed to support these critical grid-planning solutions.
Duke Energy's applications, running on AWS, will help the utility advance its data-driven grid investment plans to improve resiliency, integrate renewable energy sources, and prepare for widespread electric vehicle adoption.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. and SEATTLE, Nov. 17, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Duke Energy (NYSE: DUK), one of America's largest energy holding companies, and Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company (NASDAQ: AMZN), are entering into a multiyear strategic collaboration to accelerate the utility's development of industry-leading grid solutions that will benefit customers and help advance Duke Energy's clean energy transition.

As part of this agreement, Duke Energy will build new smart grid software and services on AWS and expand its Intelligent Grid Services – a suite of custom-built applications that help the utility anticipate future energy demand and identify where and how to update the power grid. AWS, in turn, will work alongside Duke Energy to build out cloud technologies to support Duke Energy's grid-planning solutions, so they run faster and more cost effectively.

This collaboration will further Duke Energy's commitment to use AWS as their primary cloud provider for software development. The utility is also migrating information technology (IT) and grid analytics workloads to AWS.

Duke Energy is executing an aggressive clean energy strategy to create a smarter energy future for its customers and communities. This includes investing $145 billion over the next decade in capital projects, the majority of which will go toward modernizing the nation's largest electric grid. These investments will improve the grid's reliability and resiliency, connect a growing number of renewables and prepare the grid for rapid electric vehicle adoption – all while keeping affordability for customers at the forefront.

"Our digital evolution is foundational to our clean energy transition," says Bonnie Titone, senior vice president and chief information officer at Duke Energy. "For example, to accurately simulate future energy needs and plan investments for the grid, we need to run hundreds of millions of power flow calculations – a process that would take weeks using traditional IT hardware. By using cloud technologies that AWS is developing for Duke Energy, we aim to run those same simulations in 15 minutes or less."

These simulations – and other analytics made possible by Duke Energy's Intelligent Grid Services applications on AWS – deliver insights that will help the utility continue its data-driven grid investment plans. The industry-leading applications can forecast where needs will be greatest and estimate the amount of load the distribution system can accommodate without impacting power quality or reliability. These applications can also make recommendations on the most cost-effective grid solutions needed to meet the evolving needs of customers, whether that customer is an individual who wants to put solar panels on their home or a commercial customer that wants to electrify its fleet of vehicles.

And by running the applications on AWS, Duke Energy is able to get these actionable insights from millions of gigabytes of data at unprecedented scale and speed. Faster, more accurate insights mean Duke Energy is better equipped to build the grid of the future – a smart grid that can withstand extreme weather, handle the growing needs of electric vehicles, and support green technologies, such as rooftop solar and battery energy storage.

"Duke Energy and AWS share similar commitments to a smarter and cleaner energy future with net-zero carbon emissions," said Sarah Cooper, general manager of AWS Industry Products. "These Intelligent Grid Services leverage the proven scalability and reliability of the world's leading cloud and will help Duke Energy meet energy demands while maximizing the use of clean energy sources, such as solar and wind power, to serve their customers."

"Customers are at the center of everything Duke Energy does," said Harry Sideris, executive vice president of customer experience, solutions and services at Duke Energy. "Through this partnership with AWS, we'll be able to make better decisions at the micro and macro levels to meet the evolving needs of our customers and communities as we build a smarter, cleaner energy future together."

Duke Energy

Duke Energy (NYSE: DUK), a Fortune 150 company headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., is one of America's largest energy holding companies. Its electric utilities serve 8.2 million customers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky, and collectively own 50,000 megawatts of energy capacity. Its natural gas unit serves 1.6 million customers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Ohio and Kentucky. The company employs 28,000 people.

Duke Energy is executing an aggressive clean energy transition to achieve its goals of net-zero methane emissions from its natural gas business by 2030 and net-zero carbon emissions from electricity generation by 2050. The company has interim carbon emission targets of at least 50% reduction from electric generation by 2030, 50% for Scope 2 and certain Scope 3 upstream and downstream emissions by 2035, and 80% from electric generation by 2040. In addition, the company is investing in major electric grid enhancements and energy storage, and exploring zero-emission power generation technologies such as hydrogen and advanced nuclear.

Duke Energy was named to Fortune's 2022 "World's Most Admired Companies" list and Forbes' "World's Best Employers" list. More information is available at duke-energy.com. The Duke Energy News Center contains news releases, fact sheets, photos and videos. Duke Energy's illumination features stories about people, innovations, community topics and environmental issues. Follow Duke Energy on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.

Amazon Web Services

For over 15 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world's most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud offering. AWS has been continually expanding its services to support virtually any cloud workload, and it now has more than 200 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and management from 93 Availability Zones within 29 geographic regions, with announced plans for 18 more Availability Zones and six more AWS Regions in Australia, Canada, India, Israel, New Zealand, and Thailand. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com.

Amazon

Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Amazon strives to be Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company, Earth's Best Employer, and Earth's Safest Place to Work. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Career Choice, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, Alexa, Just Walk Out technology, Amazon Studios, and The Climate Pledge are some of the things pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit amazon.com/about and follow @AmazonNews.

Duke Energy media contact: Caroline Portillo
704.488.6874

SOURCE Duke Energy