The fire at a single electricity sub-station on the night of March 20, 2025, at the North Hyde 275kV electrical substation, about 1.5 miles from Heathrow in west London, seriously disrupted the area’s power supply, including that of Heathrow Airport, the busiest airport in Europe and second biggest airport in the world. At least one of the substations transformers and various surrounding assets and components burned down.

About 67,000 homes and businesses in the area including Heathrow Airport were cut off overnight as a result of this issue. The airport closure has caused chaos, leaving thousands of passengers stranded. More than 1,300 flights have been affected – bout 120 of these were already in the air. This incident caused commercial damage running into millions.

As in many countries, the UK power grid is generally old or outdated, with many of its components and electrical assets at the end of their anticipated service lifetime.

The closure of one of the world’s largest airports due to a failure of just one electricity substation underlines how important it is that critical national energy infrastructure – substations, pylons, overhead power lines and so on – keeps functioning and are automatically monitored 24/7.

This is only becoming more important as demand for electricity increases, as transport and domestic heating is switched to electrified alternatives – notably electric cars and heat pumps.

To help protect grid assets we have developed the AI Energy Asset Inspection PowerBrains software for local substation monitoring automation. It increases substation resilience and security by automatically monitoring energy assets 24/7 and alarming as soon as anomalies occur. Using optical and thermal cameras, our system monitors assets and their surroundings, detecting heat anomalies, structural defects, corrosion, and potential threats such as intruders or sabotage.

Our AI is Internet independent and seamlessly integrates with existing substation infrastructure and SCADA systems. It can be deployed within weeks, offering rapid protection against risks, enhances transformer security, prevents critical incidents, and strengthens infrastructure resilience and national security.

We are eager to collaborate with Network Operators, utilities, DNOs/DSOs, TNOs and asset management and security teams to safeguard your energy assets and grid operations.

Don’t hesitate reaching out to us.

“The age of Artificial Intelligence is in full steam, propelling a global shift to AI driven automation, digitization and efficiency” said Samuel Staehle, founder and Chairman of PBS. “Step by step AI is transforming every industry, company and region. Infrastructure enterprises are adopting on-device AI to revolutionize workflows and dramatically reduce asset inspection cycle times from months to seconds. Digitization investments are surging with breakthroughs across various sectors. At PBS we are proud to be part of this next industrial revolution.” he said.

The complete Top 100 AI companies list is available at F6S.com here.

Find out about the benefits that edge AI offers and the challenges that need to be overcome.

Interesting for anyone who wants to get to grips with the technologies of the future in the energy sector!

Next-generation AI company announced the release of its monitoring and predictive maintenance AI IoT PowerBrain.

Abu Dhabi, UAE / Eindhoven, NL, February 3, 2020 /PowerBrainShop/ — At the TIP Summit in Abu Dhabi, UAE, the Artificial Intelligence software company PowerBrain.Shop® announced the release of its monitoring and predictive maintenance AI IoT PowerBrain B2B product.

Technology Innovation Pioneers (TIP), an initiative launched by the Ministry of Economy, Department of Economic Development, Department of Health and the Environment Agency in Abu Dhabi in line with the National Strategy for Innovation, invited PowerBrain.Shop® to present its revolutionary AI PowerBrains technology at the TIP 2020 summit helping advance the entrepreneurial ecosystem that will solve important challenges in the UAE and the world through breakthrough innovation.

AI PowerBrains are standard-of-the-shelf B2B Artificial Intelligence (AI) software products specifically designed to meet the needs of typical AI use case scenarios of solution providers and manufacturers addressing world market applications. Adding AI to Internet of Things (IoT) solutions, digitalization and industry 4.0 projects, public safety and robotics – easily and economically. Unparalleled in their flexibility, AI IoT PowerBrains run in a portable and scalable fashion in all types of embedded systems and on all computing hardware platforms as well as industry servers and cloud computing systems.

“AI PowerBrains for our business customers worldwide are the next revolutionary milestone in the mass market adoption of industry-quality Artificial Intelligence” says Christian Kramer, PowerBrain.Shop® co-founder.

The monitoring and predictive maintenance AI IoT PowerBrain running in an embedded system adds significant operational value by supervising all sorts of machines and facilities, integrating different sensors based on artificially intelligent learning and deep-learning. During operation the AI IoT PowerBrain processes the multi-dimensional sensor data streams and their complex patterns. It raises an alarm when the first signs of necessary intervention or maintenance occur. This allows the situation to be handled before irreparable machine damage is caused or an industrial process breaks down. Completely independent of internet connectivity during training or operations the AI IoT PowerBrain runs stand-alone on site.

“At PowerBrain.Shop® we are proud to offer super unique and cutting-edge AI which does not dependent on internet access or mobile network coverage. This breaktrough innovation enables AI to add value even in most remote places, in the air and underground.” says Dr. Steffen Remmele, CTO.

Numerous embedded system manufacturers, Drone and IoT solution providers from around the world have already agreed on co-operating and adopting AI PowerBrains in their solution offerings, with a growing list of adopters to follow.

To help keeping our environment clean the revolutionary AI TrashDetect PowerBrain was invented to run in drones. With its camera it recognizes different types of trash in real time on different urban and rural surfaces, including forest soil, rivers, parks, oceans, beaches and desert, for automatic trash detection and pick up. This way less species are sickened or even killed by trash ingestion or entanglement.

PowerBrain.Shop® has also joined forces with distinguished international software industry leaders to advance mass market adoption of Artificial Intelligence based on AI PowerBrains.

“Releasing a new AI PowerBrain at this fantastic event here in Abu Dhabi is another milestone on our way forward – making our world a better place by embracing the latest artificial intelligent technologies to help solving global problems”, says Samuel T. Staehle, founder and CEO.

© 2020 POWERBRAINSHOP Holding Corporation

To learn more about PowerBrain.Shop’s AI PowerBrains capabilities just visit our exhibition stand and our presentation slots:

2020 TIP Summit – Conference Area
New York University
Saadiyat Marina District
Abu Dhabi
UAE

https://tip.gov.ae/summit/