AI integration enables real-time monitoring, fault detection, and predictive maintenance.
Grid complexity rises with 500 GW renewable energy target by 2030.
AI aims to minimise maintenance costs, energy losses, and operational risks.
India is planning to deploy artificial intelligence (AI) into the heart of its national electricity grid to enable real-time risk detection, fault prediction and market manipulation surveillance, senior officials told Down To Earth on September 17, 2025.
This marks a strategic shift in the power sector with AI mainly being used for load forecasting, renewable generation prediction and revenue optimization, especially for wind and solar to using real-time streaming data at 40 millisecond resolution to track emerging instability across the network before it triggers cascading outages.
With renewable energy projected to cross 500 gigawatt (GW) before 2030, grid managers warned that the system’s growing complexity demands machine-speed decision-making.
Explaining the present scenario, Chairman and managing director of Grid India Samir Chandra Saxena at the KPMG energy conference told Down To Earth that the electricity grid now works both as a physical system (wires, substations, power plants) and a digital system (software, sensors data). These two are so connected that you cannot treat them separately anymore.
He also emphasised that AI should act like a smart guard that sees incoming trouble in the grid and stops it before it grows. He said AI systems will be instrumental in detecting weak points and abnormal patterns across geographically dispersed but connected assets, helping avert wide-area blackouts.
AI Enhances Grid Reliability
According to the Power Line magazine, AI, machine learning and blockchain-based technologies are critical for modernising distribution companies. While their applications are at a nascent stage, they hold great potential to revolutionise energy distribution and consumption.
Meanwhile, another report by ScienceDirect outlined that AI could play a significant role in early detection and prevention of potential grid failures and reduce costs by minimising maintenance expenses and energy losses. International Energy Agency (IEA) also stated that India had launched an ₹3.03 trillion scheme to support power distribution companies and improve distribution infrastructure including smart meters and is expected to support AI-based responsiveness and situational awareness.
These moves indicated India’s efforts to lay ground for the systems where AI will play central role in continuous monitoring, anticipating faults and taking corrective actions.
