Artificial intelligence is powering more and more of the things we interact with every day, from our gadgets to our cars. But it's also playing a growing role in how society's undergirding resources -- energy, food, and water -- are sourced, secured, and delivered. In this three-part series, we'll consider how AI is being used to make those resources more environmentally and financially sustainable. AI is not a discrete technology, but rather a school of powerful and widely applicable data science tools, which include machine learning, pattern recognition, and natural language processing. All of these tools can squeeze far more useful information out of data, and more quickly than humans could reasonably do on their own.

Solar energy products and services developers and vendors continue to leverage the latest in distributed information and communications technology (ICT) in bids to drive further declines in the cost and boost the productivity of solar energy systems. Development and use of an expanding range of machine-to-machine (M2M) communications and "Internet of Things" devices – wireless network sensors and "smart," network-connected inverters, meters and other devices – along with high-reliability wireless/mobile networking and cloud software- and infrastructure-as-a-service (SaaS and IaaS) platforms are enabling vendors and their customers to collect, analyze and act upon continuous streams of digital data and approach ideal maximum electrical power and energy production while coincidentally minimizing installation, operations and maintenance costs. With more than nine gigawatts (GWs) worth of its products installed on five continents, in 1991 Fremont, California-based NEXTracker published a groundbreaking white paper describing a new algorithm that improved solar tracking and resulted in gains of around three percent in solar PV facility production. While that methodology continues to be applied in nearly all solar energy tracking systems today, NEXTracker is pushing the technological envelope out further. On July 11, the company introduced its latest innovation to the market, a "first-of-its-kind intelligent, self-adjusting tracker control system for solar power plants."

NEXTracker, who makes devices that shift solar panels to soak in as much direct sunlight as possible, acquired a startup called BrightBox Technologies out of Berkeley (shocker) to add some intelligence to its hardware. NEXTracker will use software developed by BrightBox, originally made to monitor and control temperatures in large buildings, to increase energy production of solar farms, thereby enabling faster operations and easier maintenance. Can you say streamlining processes? AI is great for that.

When Facebook, Amazon, IBM, Microsoft and Google team up and form a partnership for the development of a rapidly advancing technology, it's time to start paying attention. You've heard of it, surely. You may know it as Apple's Siri or IBM's Watson. You may know it as Tesla's autopilot. Maybe your mind goes straight to Westworld or Ex Machina.

Electronics giant Flextronics, through its solar gear subsidiary NEXTracker, has acquired a young startup called BrightBox Technologies, which builds predictive modeling and machine learning software, the companies announced late on Monday. NEXTracker makes hardware, called trackers, which automatically tilt solar panels throughout the day to face the sun to increase the amount of power that panels generate. These trackers are generally used on large solar panel farms in remote locations that sell their power to utilities or large companies. Flextronics (now called Flex) itself bought NEXTracker last year for 330 million. Now, NEXTracker is acquiring BrightBox Technologies, a three-year-old company based in Berkeley, Calif. that has developed software to optimize heating and cooling systems in buildings.