How Tapestry came to support a stronger, cleaner grid in Chile

When we began our work with the grid planners at Chile’s grid operator Coordinador Electrico Nacional (CEN) in 2021, we knew we’d found an ideal partner. A government committed to a zero-carbon grid by 2050, a grid with ample clean energy resources but transmission challenges, and a team of passionate grid experts embracing new technology made a perfect match for Tapestry’s vision to build the tools grid operators globally need to manage the transition to a clean, reliable and affordable energy future.

I’m thrilled to share that CEN is now deploying Tapestry’s Grid Planning Tool for their annual transmission expansion planning process. This marks a significant milestone in our journey, showcasing Tapestry’s ability to deliver results for CEN and the 20 million Chileans they serve. The annual transmission expansion planning process is how Chile’s grid planners assess the energy needs for the country 20 years into the future and the investments they need to make to meet those demands. The insights will also inform how hundreds of millions of public funding is invested in grid infrastructure improvements over the coming years. 

Providing certainty in an increasingly uncertain world

Grid Planners have to anticipate what the grid might need to do every second of every day, years or even decades in advance. Its heroes' work and the job is getting harder each day as they juggling more dynamic renewables coming onto the grid, skyrocketing energy demands and a 100-plus-year-old grid that wasn’t designed for today’s energy landscape. 

The challenges of unpredictable renewable energy generation and the overwhelming volume of data required for effective grid planning inspired our team to apply AI to grid planning. Tapestry’s Grid Planning Tool is a first-of-its-kind tool that enables large-scale, long-term grid simulations with unprecedented speed and granularity, decades into the future. It empowers operators to explore a much wider range of scenarios and mitigation solutions than legacy tools, making it the perfect companion for grid planners to make informed, economical decisions.  

Progress through partnership 

With clean, reliable power supply at stake, grid operators have to integrate novel technologies like our Grid Planning Tool into their work gradually, so CEN started by using it to verify and expand on simulations generated by their legacy software. As we shared earlier this year, that work produced promising results: the CEN team reduced the amount of time required to run simulations by 86 percent, and can now run 30 simulations simultaneously instead of just one at a time. While both teams are pleased with the progress, it’s just the beginning. Our goal is to make CEN’s planning process 100x faster.

_{Tapestry’s Grid Planning tool shows the transmission grid at a glance, integrating multiple data streams to show how energy can be made, moved and used up to 20 years into the future. Starting with a map of the whole system, grid planners can zoom in to inspect specific parts of the system and identify potential trouble spots (in red) at an hourly resolution (the bottom of this image). This GIF shows congestion (red) on some lines in the afternoon. To help grid planners develop the most economical mitigation plans they can use the price prediction tool (the box on the right) to compare the price of different energy sources. This universal view and the granularity of the information gives planners a deeper understanding of their energy system so they can make the most efficient, affordable and sustainable decisions.}

Making the grid work the way we need it now and in the future will require great technological leaps, and my team and I believe that process begins with putting the best tech of the day in the hands of the experts. CEN has seen the potential of the Grid Planning Tool over the last two years and now trusting it enough to give it a central role in their planning for 2025 feels like an important step before the leap.

Our team founded Tapestry seven years ago because we could see the transformative potential for AI to bring the grid out of the industrial age and into the age of intelligence. Making the grid planning process smarter, faster, and easier will be crucial for accelerating the global energy transition. The AI-powered tools we’re building at Tapestry are designed for the uniquely complex nature of the grid and were made in close partnership with the people working against the odds to keep our lights on every second of every day. We’ve glimpsed what that power can do in Chile and are now more excited than ever to bring it to other partners around the globe. If you’re interested in working with our team to transform your grid planning process, please reach out.