Welsh energy companies, technology businesses, network operators, universities and innovators are being given an opportunity to help shape how artificial intelligence could transform Britain's energy system.
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has launched a call for evidence that will inform the UK's first AI for Clean Energy Strategy, exploring how AI could change the way an increasingly complex energy system is planned, operated and managed.
The consultation is open until 6 November 2026, meaning Wales-based organisations can contribute evidence on opportunities, risks, barriers to adoption and where government intervention could help accelerate progress.
For Wales, the exercise could also open a wider conversation about whether the nation has the right combination of assets and expertise to become a real-world testing ground for AI-enabled energy technologies.
Wales combines significant renewable generation with major industrial energy users, ports, rural electricity networks, universities, technology businesses and emerging energy infrastructure. Together, these could provide environments in which new AI applications are tested against genuine energy challenges.
The UK Government believes AI could improve forecasting of electricity supply and demand, support the integration of renewable generation, improve network management and increase the efficiency and reliability of energy infrastructure.
That has direct relevance to Wales. Renewable developers could use better forecasting and optimisation to manage generation, while industrial businesses could deploy AI to reduce consumption and manage demand. Ports and industrial clusters could eventually use intelligent systems to coordinate increasingly complex combinations of generation, storage and industrial energy requirements.
Wales-based operators now have an opportunity to put forward practical examples of where AI could add value, the barriers preventing adoption and the conditions required to move technologies from trials into commercial deployment.
The consultation could therefore provide a timely opportunity for Welsh Government to explore whether some of those challenges could form the basis of future demonstrator projects in Wales, bringing together industry, academia, energy operators and technology companies.
Ports, industrial clusters, renewable developments or regional energy systems could potentially become test environments for technologies addressing network constraints, renewable forecasting, battery optimisation, predictive maintenance and industrial energy efficiency.
There could be a wider economic prize too.
As AI becomes increasingly embedded within energy networks, generation, storage and industrial processes, new businesses, skills and supply chains are likely to develop around the technology.
Positioning Wales as somewhere those solutions can be trialled could help attract investment while giving Welsh technology businesses and researchers opportunities to develop expertise and intellectual property capable of being commercialised elsewhere.
Those within industry, academia, system operators, regulators and other energy stakeholders can find out more here – https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6a9ebc1901bbff0bf8f97eee/vision-ai-enabled-clean-energy-system-cfe.pdf
