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National Grid Partners

The war in Ukraine has only increased Grain’s strategic importance. Not only does the terminal serve as an essential supplier of energy to the UK, but it’s also a key facility for storing and moving gas into Europe. Today, the terminal is handling a record number of vessels—30 percent more than its previous busiest year. 

Using AI to Optimize Critical National Infrastructure

National Grid Grain LNG is a critical part of the United Kingdom’s energy infrastructure. As the largest liquified natural gas terminal in Europe and the eighth largest in the world by tank capacity, it delivers between 20 and 25 percent of the natural gas in the UK each day.

This increased demand has made scheduling maintenance more challenging. “We’d always managed in the past to fit in maintenance around customer activity, and we’re no longer able to do that,” said Mark Johnson, technical development and delivery manager for National Grid Grain. Outages—both planned and unplanned—also come at a steep cost, quickly running into the millions of pounds. 

To address these challenges, Grain needed a solution that could help predict problems and reduce the amount of downtime needed for maintenance. That’s why it turned to SparkCognition, an Austin, Texas-based startup that uses artificial intelligence to help businesses achieve their strategic goals.

What's the Story

“In this case, we really had two objectives: How do we minimize unplanned downtime when plants shut down without notice? And how do we optimize uptime and get more out of a facility when it is operationally sound?”

The collaboration between National Grid Grain and SparkCognition began with a proof of concept. Using historical sensor data from Grain, SparkCognition was able to assess a set of compressors at the terminal and identify when they were in need of maintenance.

“We were able to identify more than 75 percent of their events, with an average lead time of about eight days,” said Sridhar Sudarsan, chief technology officer at SparkCognition. “And with access to data from more sensors, we could capture up to 94 percent of events.” Using SparkCognition’s monitoring system, false alerts also stood to fall from at least one per hour to just one per month—a much more manageable number.

These insights provide a range of benefits, enabling Grain to minimize unplanned downtime, perform preventive maintenance, extend the life of equipment, optimize workforce scheduling, and reduce “alert fatigue” by limiting the number of false alerts. “The problem with alert fatigue is that people stop trusting alerts, so they ignore alerts,” said Sudarsan. “And when you ignore alerts, you might ignore a real issue.”

Separately, as older workers retire, they often take decades of institutional knowledge with them, and new workers don’t have the same familiarity with how to tweak and tune the systems. A benefit of AI is that it’s able to supplement human intelligence and ensure information is documented and passed on. 

Following the success of the proof of concept, Grain is planning to use SparkCognition’s AI solutions to monitor its pumps and compressors real-time.  

Preventing downtime and helping workers become more efficient and effective is particularly important right now. Grain is midway through an expansion project and expects to grow 25 percent by 2025. “It's only getting bigger and bigger,” said Johnson.

SparkCognition also sees this as just the beginning. “With AI, it’s always progressively getting better, getting smarter,” said Chief Marketing Officer Steve Gold. “The models are continually tuned and adapted. So we’re never quite done with the journey.”

The SparkCognition Use Case

With AI, it’s always progressively getting better, getting smarter. The models are continually tuned and adapted. So we’re never quite done with the journey.