Enel and C3 have been working together since 2013. Two of Enel's enterprise-wide digital transformation efforts with C3 are fraud detection and predictive maintenance of distribution assets. With C3, Enel transformed its approach to identifying and prioritizing electricity theft (non-technical loss), with a goal to double the recovery of unbilled energy while improving productivity. The effort required building AI/machine learning algorithms to match the performance delivered by Enel experts using a process honed over 30 years of experience. To accomplish this, the teams worked together to replace traditional non-technical loss identification processes with the C3 Fraud Detection application.

In enterprise AI, C3 (formerly C3 IoT) is amassing an impressive and seemingly unmatched record, one that the company has extended with its latest win, the expansion of a five-year engagement with Enel, Europe's largest power utility, to encompass nearly 50 million smart meters in homes and businesses. This follows C3 contract wins last year with Royal Dutch Shell, the U.S. Air Force and 3M, along with partnerships with AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. In the large utilities space, other customers include Con Edison, covering the New York metropolitan area, and Engie, one of the biggest utilities in France. The new contract (dollar amount not disclosed) expands on C3's existing, five-year engagement for Enel in Italy involving 32 million smart meters. C3 will provide the €74.6 billion utility with AI and smart grid analytics applications enabling Enel to deploy the Unified Virtual Data Lake, integrating data across its retail, distribution, trading, renewables and conventional generation businesses. The C3 AI Suite automates elements of data management, data science and AI application building, enabling the entirety of corporate data, regardless of data format or system – such as ERP, HR, financial and operational systems, including SAP Hana, Oracle, Siemens, PostGreSQL, MongoDB, and Cloudera – "to enable and deliver next-generation AI applications across Enel's business," C3 said.

Drones have become the ultimate option for monitoring, surveying and inspection. Enel, the multinational energy company has implemented this strategy and selected Percepto's Sparrow system to monitor the Torrevaldaliga Nord power plant in Italy. The Sparrow's AI and computer vision technology will allow it to operate as independently as possible, and the collected aerial footage, photography is transmitted to Enel in real-time. "While drones are touted as the technology of the future, the ability to act autonomously unlocks their true potential, enabling them to act as a responsible, independent and smart team member that provides not only a bird's eye view of facilities, but real, actionable insights," said Percepto CEO, Dor Abuhasira. The goal is to introduce cost-effective and practical drone support to a business model attempting to continuously refine itself.