E.ON's quantum lead on finding real advantage in energy grid optimisation

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The Quantum Insider has an interview with Corey O'Meara, who leads E.ON's quantum computing team. E.ON is one of Europe's biggest energy companies, so it is a good example of a large business exploring quantum seriously. The team is small, with five people. They use systems from D-Wave and IBM

Their flagship work is on peer to peer energy trading. As more homes generate their own power with solar panels and store it in batteries, matching buyers and sellers across a grid becomes a very hard optimisation problem. O'Meara describes it as an extremely hard problem. The team has reported evidence of a quantum scaling advantage on it, published in the journal Quantum Science and Technology

It is worth being careful with the phrase scaling advantage. It usually means the quantum approach improves faster as the problem grows, compared with the classical methods tested. That is promising, but it does not necessarily mean the quantum machine is already faster on real grid problems today. Still, peer reviewed evidence from an industrial team is more solid than most marketing claims

One of the more striking comments in the interview is O'Meara saying he would want to own a quantum computer. Most companies are happy to access quantum machines through the cloud. Wanting your own suggests E.ON sees long term value in having dedicated hardware for its problems. It also hints at how important energy optimisation could become as grids get more complex

I find energy one of the most convincing areas for quantum optimisation. The problems are real, growing and economically important, and grids are becoming more decentralised every year. Even small improvements in how power is matched and routed could save money and cut emissions. A five person team doing peer reviewed work is exactly the kind of steady effort the field needs

Do you think energy grids will be one of the first real uses of quantum computing? And would you trust an interview claim of quantum advantage without seeing the paper?

Corey O'Meara (E.ON): Finding Real Quantum Advantage in Grid Optimizationthequantuminsider.com