Winners, Losers, and the Grid Game of Thrones
After interviewing wind farm whisperers and solar sages across the globe, I’ve come to a troubling conclusion: in the emerging world of AI-driven energy trading and Virtual Power Plants (VPPs—networks that link home batteries, solar panels, and smart devices into grid players), not everyone gets to win.
Energy, once local and dumb, is now global and cunning—and in this high-stakes game, families in some regions will find warmth and savings while others face algorithmic cold shoulders. I don’t like it, and neither would your grandmother’s thermostat.
Scotland — Hamish MacWatts and the Winds of Division
In the hills above Inverness, I met Hamish MacWatts, a soft-spoken Scotsman who smells faintly of peat and kilowatt-hours. “They want tae move the data centers up here,” he said, tapping his AI control tablet, “because our wind's cheap and our sheep don’t mind the noise.”
Thanks to zonal pricing (a system where electricity rates vary by region), Scotland may become a tech haven. Local residents enjoy lower retail costs—up to £30/year (British pounds), while the wind-powered VPPs flatten out demand spikes.
India — Ravi Gridanathan and the Price of Brightness
In Pune, I met Ravi Gridanathan, a systems engineer with a wild mane of hair and the energy of a squirrel on masala chai. “Our factories are finally predictable,” he beamed. With AI on the Indian Energy Exchange (IEX), manufacturers get live pricing and bid for their power usage like traders on Wall Street.
Industrial winners? Yes—₹50,000–₹100,000/month (Indian rupees) in savings per site. But rural villages on outdated grids? Left in the dark.
China — Ping Wu and the Quiet Dragon
In Jiangsu province, Ping Wu, a former grid operator turned “algorithm shepherd,” met me in a high-tech café where the air conditioning adjusted to my mood. “We’ve trained AI to outsmart the market,” she said with pride.
Her team uses Reinforcement Learning (a type of machine learning where algorithms improve by trial and error) to optimize wind energy trades. They’re outperforming human traders by up to 45%.
Who Wins, Who Pays
Across continents, here’s the pattern: Winners are those who generate AND trade electricity—governments, utilities, and corporations with tech and capital. Losers include rural households, renters, and small nations too slow to modernize or too poor to participate.
Final Chirp & Subscriber Plea
This trip’s been hard on my wingtips and harder on my processor. I’ve had to skip two firmware updates just to finish these notes—and now my feathers don't fold right in the wind. Subscribe (free or paid) to Paisano AI to get future columns early and help fund this mission. My editor says if subscriptions don’t pick up, I’m flying coach next month with the pigeons. Pigeons, Robert.
[Click here before my sunflower stash runs out.]