The two-year grant will be used to apply elements of the breakthrough technology that helped to solve protein-folding to solar forecasting.
The non-profit – co-founded by Dr Jack Kelly, a former engineer at Google DeepMind – aims to deliver a state-of-the-art online solar electricity forecasting service covering the UK and Europe.
Their target is to reduce global CO2 emissions by 100m tonnes per year by 2030 – broadly equivalent to taking all UK cars & lorries off the road.
Open Climate Fix aims to reduce carbon emissions as quickly as possible and will collaborate with other forecasting companies. Code and research results will be completely open so they can have maximum climate impact and be continually improved.
Solar power generation fluctuates as clouds change shape and block sunlight. Existing forecasting models are not good at predicting sunlight a few hours ahead.
Open Climate Fix uses images taken every five minutes from a geostationary satellite – one that appears stationary but is actually rotating at the same speed as the earth.
The machine learning algorithm uses the recent history of the images to determine how clouds are moving and changing over time.
Open Climate Fix will also adapt “transformer” models to solar forecasting. Transformers lie at the heart of recent breakthroughs such as Google DeepMind’s AlphaFold-2. It was last year hailed for its once-in-a-generation scientific breakthrough in predicting the shape of proteins.
Combining machine learning on satellite images, traditional weather forecasts and maps of solar power generation units will produce a forecast updated every five minutes.
The funding was awarded as part of Google.org’s highly competitive Impact Challenge On Climate, which receives thousands of applications every year.
Dr Kelly said: “We’re delighted that Google.org has chosen to support us in this venture. We want to do everything in our power to reduce emissions as quickly as possible.
“Most electricity grids simply will not be able to reduce CO2 emissions to net-zero without significantly better electricity forecasts. Net-zero grids will be more complex than today's grids and will require better coordination, which in turn need better renewable generation forecasts. That’s what we aim to deliver.”
Rowan Barnett, Head of Google.org for EMEA and APAC, said: “Among the many applications we've received to our Google.org Impact Challenge on Climate, the expert jury were convinced by Open Climate Fix's innovative and tech driven approach.
“We know that Artificial Intelligence can have a transformative impact when applied to challenges in the climate change sector, and we're excited to be supporting this work.”
