AI Summary
5 min read“The grid is the most complex machine humans have ever built — and it’s an act of miracle that it works as well as it does.” That’s Josh Wong, CEO of Think Labs, setting the stage for a conversation with host Shayle Kann about what actually happens inside utility planning and operations, and where AI might fundamentally change it. Wong, a former planning engineer himself, argues that the grid’s reliability is an engineering marvel, but its analog-era processes are buckling under the weight of electrification, data centers, and renewables. The episode dives into two distinct but converging domains: planning (the multi-year studies that decide where to build) and operations (the minute-to-minute job of keeping the lights on). Wong explains how AI — specifically physics-informed machine learning, not general-purpose large language models — could collapse months-long studies into minutes, generate solutions instead of just flagging problems, and finally bridge the silos between planning and operations that have long been held together by spreadsheets and human intuition.
Planning: Studies, silos, and the limits of worst-case thinking
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What you'll learn
- 1 (03:58) **Inside Utility Planning Today** - Josh describes the current state of utility resource planning, broken into silos for resource, transmission, distribution, and DER planning.
- 2 (06:33) **The "Solutioning" Problem** - Planners must manually find solutions to grid problems through trial and error based on experience, a process that is overwhelmed by modern complexity.
- 3 (09:07) **The Grid's "Act of Miracle" vs. Digital Lag** - The grid's high reliability is an engineering marvel, but it has failed to keep up with digitalization and modernization over the last two decades.
- 4 (11:00) **Distribution Studies: The Volume Problem** - On the distribution side, studies are triggered by interconnection requests and face a massive volume problem with poor data quality.
- 5 (13:11) **The AI Solution: Physics-Informed Models** - Josh explains Think Labs' approach to using physics-informed AI to automate grid studies, moving away from manual processes.
- 6 (16:10) **Training vs. LLMs: Deterministic & Efficient** - The AI models are trained per-utility for security, are highly efficient, and produce deterministic, verifiable results.
- 7 (20:09) **Generative AI: From Problems to Solutions** - Unlike traditional simulators that only identify problems, AI can now generate and recommend solutions.
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Guests on this episode
Show Notes
Everyone loves to talk about the “broken grid.” But if you look inside a utility’s planning and operations functions, a different picture emerges: infrastructure that is remarkably reliable, built and run by engineers solving impossibly complex problems with often outdated tools.
In this episode, Shayle Kann sits down with Josh Wong, CEO and founder of ThinkLabs AI, a company building physics-informed AI for utility planning and operations. They break down how utility studies get built today, the data cleanup headaches, the silos between teams, and the “worst case” mentality that drives an overbuild of infrastructure.
Shayle and Josh discuss:
Why utility planning is split into silos across transmission, distribution, and DER planning.
The gap between studies that identify grid problems and the work of actually solving them.
What “physics-informed AI” actually means.
The shift from AI that identifies problems to AI that actually solves them.
The disconnect between utility planning and real-time operations.
Should data center microgrids be treated as micro utilities?
Resources:
Latitude Media: GE spinout ThinkLabs has a new copilot offering for the grid
Latitude Media: Do microgrids make sense for data centers?
Latitude Media: The case against relying on behind-the-meter power for data centers
Latitude Media: Unpacking DOE's proposal to transform data center interconnection
Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Max Savage Levenson. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor.
This episode of Catalyst is brought to you by ENGIE, the smarter energy supplier. ENGIE doesn't just provide the power to run your business — they supply the energy to move it forward, with reliable, flexible solutions built for what's next. Learn more at engieresources.com.
Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. Peak season puts every grid to the test — and the utilities that pass are the ones that built flexible capacity before they needed it. EnergyHub works with more than 170 utilities to coordinate 2.5 million devices and 3.4 gigawatts of dispatchable f
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