Power use optimization: Dell’s AI tackles grid flexibility

Could AI enhance grid flexibility and improve power use? A new initiative announced this week by Dell Technologies Inc. is designed to address this possibility.

Concept Astro is Dell’s new solution that uses agentic AI, digital twins and automation to improve IT operations and energy consumption.

Dell’s Seamus Jones and Alyson Freeman talk with theCUBE about power use, during a discussion at Dell Technologies World.

“AI uses lots of energy, but AI can be part of the solution for how we optimize data centers,” said Alyson Freeman (pictured, right), innovation lead for sustainability and ESG at Dell. “We have deployed an actual proof of concept that we call Concept Astro for the first time in trying to make sure that they run those workloads with lower cost and lower energy. It uses AI to predict how long it’s going to take to create that model and then feeds in information from the energy grid … about the cost of the energy that they need and the emissions associated with it.”

Freeman spoke with theCUBE’s John Furrier at Dell Technologies World, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. She was joined by Seamus Jones (left), director of technical marketing engineering at Dell, and they discussed the company’s initiatives to reduce power consumption in the enterprise. (* Disclosure below.)

Tracking enterprise IT power use

For those running AI workloads, Concept Astro offers an ability to pull-in real time insights for a comprehensive view across data center operations. The goal is to save energy and lower costs by running power-intensive workloads at optimum times and locations.

“We’re trying to give transparency within the dashboard so we can understand where we have more power available and it can be run more efficiently,” Jones explained. “There is a huge amount of learnings from Concept Astro. We can take those learnings and then implement them into our products later on down the road so we can understand what is impactful for customers, what is impactful for the environment and what is impactful for our portfolio products.”

The use of digital twins in Dell’s initiative is a way that IT operations staff can simulate workloads and extract insights on power drain. This is designed to aid in forecasting energy need and raise power grid awareness, according to Freeman.

“The digital twin aspect is we have to model out what would happen if you ran a workload at the exact time that you hit ‘submit’ versus later, so we need the digital twin of the data center to create that modeling,” Freeman said. “It’s using AI, machine learning to decide how long it’s going to take for that workload to run and then agentic AI to run it autonomously without a human having to get involved.”

Dell’s AI-driven solution comes at a time when enterprises are increasing model usage within the business. This is also driving up energy consumption, requiring a closer look at the key factors that could ultimately save energy.

“The model wars are happening,” Jones said. “These models are just proliferating, and they’re coming at such a faster speed every day. The model will actually impact the performance of the systems and the energy it consumes as well. Some customers don’t need to run that application … other customers are absolutely performant. We want to enable them.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Dell Technologies World:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Dell Technologies World. Neither Dell Technologies Inc., the primary sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE Media