A couple years ago, Ottawa-based BluWave-ai caught the eye of India’s largest integrated power utility company, Tata Power.

Tata Power decided it wanted to test out BluWave-ai’s artificial intelligence-powered load predictor that can accurately forecast system demand for electricity. The test was done in Mumbai, India, a city that grapples with energy consumption issues on a regular basis. The city proved a perfect testbed for BluWave-ai’s technology for both that reason and the fact that India has set strong net zero emissions targets to combat its high greenhouse gas emissions and growing energy needs, caused in part by climate change.

Now, after a successful test in such a large city, BluWave-ai has brought its product home to Ontario.

Earlier this year, BluWave-ai made the AI load predictor available in Ontario as a way to better manage the scheduling and dispatch of energy storage. Predicting energy consumption can help minimize the use of fossil fuels and save money during peak hours.

BluWave-ai’s mission is to help consumers, companies, and grid operators better understand our electricity infrastructure to use it in an eco-friendly manner and save money. The startup’s AI technology can predict how much energy is going to be needed and what times one day ahead and day-of.

Devashish Paul, CEO and founder of BluWave-ai, says now is the time for this kind of solution given the growing movement towards electric vehicles (EVs). He notes that EVs are going to substantially increase the amount of electricity used. “100,000 cars will add 700 megawatts of electricity to the Ontario load, which is basically like adding three additional cities like Waterloo … or the equivalent of adding 25 to 30 General Motors, Oshawa [facilities] to the grid.”

BluWave-ai’s load predictor can be used by utility companies as well as large electricity consumers to predict upcoming energy system peaks. This allows them to reduce their demand at the right time in order to avoid higher energy costs. BluWave-ai sees the load predictor as useful for the likes of electric vehicle fleet operators as well as commercial, industrial, and institutional energy consumers.

As part of the Ontario launch, BluWave-ai tailored a suite of products specifically for the province by training it on things like publicly available system data and weather feeds from all over the province to accurately predict the system load for the entirety of Ontario.

Mumbai and Ontario are just the tip of the iceberg. BluWave-ai says its technology can easily be used in energy grids around the world.

In fact, large energy industry players are noticing BluWave-ai. In addition to India’s Tata Power, BluWave-ai works with Hydro Ottawa and PowerON Energy Solutions, a subsidiary of Ontario Power Generation. PowerON also invested in the startup earlier this year as part of a Series A funding round led by Capital Angel Network.

OCI also counts itself among BluWave-ai’s supporters through our Ready 4 Market pre-seed investment fund, which co-invests with angel and other investors in early-stage Ontario-based startups. BluWave-ai has also taken part in other OCI-run programs, such as Collaborate 2 Commercialize and ENCQOR 5G. Projects that have been funded in-part by OCI helped BluWave-ai create and test its load predictor in Ottawa and then Mumbai.

Last year, BluWave-ai was a finalist for OCI’s annual Mind to Market Award, which celebrates the best OCI-supported research collaboration, between the business and research communities, resulting in effective commercialization of leading-edge ideas and solutions.

Beyond its load predictor product, BluWave-ai is broadly focused on power grid optimization technology and has products for grid operators, EV fleets, and more. As Paul puts it, the goal is to help people and companies make educated decisions about how and when they use electricity.

Watch this video to find out how the origin story of BluWave-ai includes lava fields, solar panels, and an iron man competition in Hawaii.