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DeepMind in “very early stage” talks with National Grid to reduce UK energy use

arstechnica.co.uk

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Re: DeepMind in “very early stage” talks with National Grid to reduce UK energy use

#31

Post by chatmasta »

sweezyjeezy wrote: post #5

The DeepMind datacenter project was very interesting, but a lot of the ML people I spoke to were quite dubious about how much of it was genuinely down to new AI/neural networks, and how much of it was Google PR to justify how much they spent on DeepMind. > DeepMind trained a neural network to more accurately predict future cooling requirements, in turn reducing the power usage of the cooling system by 40 percent. But…

I think this question applies to all applications of machine learning. PR pieces love to label every application of ML to a novel field as "artificial intelligence," even when the predictions are simple enough to be predicted by statistical regression (and in many cases that's effectively what is happening).

So yes, many applications of ML are something "a regular data science team could do." However, isn't the main benefit of ML removing the need for a team of data scientists? Of course you will need some data scientists / ML engineers to support the ML product itself, but ultimately the gains will be realized from the ML doing the work that traditionally required a team of data scientists.

Re: DeepMind in “very early stage” talks with National Grid to reduce UK energy use

#32

Post by Symbiote »

RBerenguel wrote: post #23
javiermaestro wrote: post #13

Heh. If only they mandate to replace a majority of the crappy wooden + single-pane windows they have in most houses, that let all of the heat out and wind and noise in, with normal, double-glaze windows with good insulation, they would cut the energy footprint in HALF, I'm sure...

That's what I think any time I'm in the UK. But most buildings are either protected (happened in our office, windows could not be double glassed due to protection and they added a new, secondary window for insulation "behind"), or nobody wants to spend that amount of money

Not wanting to invest in the building is by far the more common reason.

Especially when the tenant will take all the advantage of lower bills, increased comfort etc.

Re: DeepMind in “very early stage” talks with National Grid to reduce UK energy use

#33

Post by DanBC »

moonbug wrote: post #29
javiermaestro wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to see the results... I've never been so baffled in my life, looking for a "normal" flat in London and looking at horrible prospects that cost a fortune with windows from a century ago. And when I asked about that, they were all saying "oh, but the house is listed! Can't change the windows unless X, Y, Z". Whatever. We can put people in a rocket and take them to the moon but we can't replace windows and make…

Someone's taking the piss. There's almost no chance a "normal" flat in London is listed. Conservation area, maybe, but that's a different kettle of fish. Most likely your prospective landlord's a cheapskate.

I don't know about London, but my very normal flat (currently renting below LHA rate) in Cheltenham is grade II listed.

There are about 2000 - 3000 grade 1 and grade 2* listed buildings in London. 92% of all listed buildings are grade 2; the other 8% are grade 1 or 2. So there's likely to be a fair amount of properties that are listed.

Re: DeepMind in “very early stage” talks with National Grid to reduce UK energy use

#34

Post by redcalx »

StargazyPi wrote: post #17
redcalx wrote: post #3

I doubt this will use deep learning though. DL works best at detecting patterns in large quantities of data, whereas the time series data here is limited to just a few years...and the system has changed over those year, and continues to change significantly. I'd guess that 10% is the cost of ensuring supply, i.e. spinning up generators as contingency - any attempt to shave saving from that may increase risk of power…

Depends; the input data set could be massive, incorporating things like TV listings data (half-time kettle surges are a huge part of our power consumption profile), weather, publicly listed events, perhaps scraped from websites and so quite dirty. I can see this transitioning quite easily from a 'we can sanitise this data ourselves' job to a 'screw it, let a massive neural net figure this out' one.

My initial best guess is that the style of analysis you're suggesting (TV guides, etc), doesn't offer sufficient safety margin in the event that a prediction is wrong. If reducing the safety margin was an option then there are probably lots of things that can be done, but if the goal is to maintain a safety margin akin to the current one then my instinct is that the gains to be had are minimal - and that the interesting work is in power storage (battery tech, cryogenic storage, etc.)

Re: DeepMind in “very early stage” talks with National Grid to reduce UK energy use

#35

Post by penetrarthur »

poooogles wrote: post #21
javiermaestro wrote: post #13

Heh. If only they mandate to replace a majority of the crappy wooden + single-pane windows they have in most houses, that let all of the heat out and wind and noise in, with normal, double-glaze windows with good insulation, they would cut the energy footprint in HALF, I'm sure...

>crappy wooden I'm not sure where you got the gripe against wood from. It lasts longer than uPVC given maintenance every 5 years, looks better, is more environmentally friendly and has similar thermal properties. Oh and it doesn't go yellow.

The amount of glue used to produce the wooden windows is so huge, that PVC windows are a much better choice both environmentally and for your health. There are different colored tapes that can be applied to make it look like wood. But they are still uglier.

Re: DeepMind in “very early stage” talks with National Grid to reduce UK energy use

#36

Post by javiermaestro »

poooogles wrote: post #21
javiermaestro wrote: post #13

Heh. If only they mandate to replace a majority of the crappy wooden + single-pane windows they have in most houses, that let all of the heat out and wind and noise in, with normal, double-glaze windows with good insulation, they would cut the energy footprint in HALF, I'm sure...

>crappy wooden I'm not sure where you got the gripe against wood from. It lasts longer than uPVC given maintenance every 5 years, looks better, is more environmentally friendly and has similar thermal properties. Oh and it doesn't go yellow.

Nothing against wood, really. But if you've been to the UK, you should agree that the unmaintained, not-properly-fitted, wooden frames that they use in most old windows are just crap. They let in huge amounts of wind, cold, etc, through the unsealed seams. Anything that improved that would be 10 times better, regardless of the yellowing, etc.

Re: DeepMind in “very early stage” talks with National Grid to reduce UK energy use

#38

Post by javiermaestro »

moonbug wrote: post #29
javiermaestro wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to see the results... I've never been so baffled in my life, looking for a "normal" flat in London and looking at horrible prospects that cost a fortune with windows from a century ago. And when I asked about that, they were all saying "oh, but the house is listed! Can't change the windows unless X, Y, Z". Whatever. We can put people in a rocket and take them to the moon but we can't replace windows and make…

Someone's taking the piss. There's almost no chance a "normal" flat in London is listed. Conservation area, maybe, but that's a different kettle of fish. Most likely your prospective landlord's a cheapskate.

I agree most buildings won't be listed and most landlords are cheapskates. But there are quite a lot of listed buildings in London:

http://londonist.com/2011/06/all-listed-buildings-in-london-...

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