In late November last year, U of T announced that it has signed a multi-year agreement with Siemens Canada — a leading provider of energy, industrial, and infrastructure solutions — to support the universitys goal to support Canada reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. The new agreement builds on the existing partnership between Siemens and U of T’s Grid Modernization Centre, which focuses on advancing clean energy technologies and decarbonizing Canada’s power system. 

Grid modernization — the focal point of the partnership — refers to the use of advanced technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) to make advances in Canada’s electric grid. Consumer demands are changing, but electricity infrastructure is only aging. 

The new partnership aims to incorporate advanced technologies into Canada’s energy grid to advance it toward becoming a ‘smart grid’,  an electricity system that uses digital technologies to improve energy supply’s efficiency and reliability, such as by reducing power outages. 

The current state of Canada’s energy grid

To achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, Canada’s electricity sector will either have to cut its greenhouse gas emissions completely or offset any remaining emissions through activities that remove carbon from the atmosphere. 

Canadian federal regulations outline a need to cut off nearly 181 megatonnes of carbon emissions from the grid cumulatively between 2024 and 2050. These regulations come after the federal government revised its initial target of achieving an emissions-neutral grid by 2035 through 2050 and faced scrutiny from major oil and gas producing provinces for endangering the reliability of the electricity grid. 

The transition to a smart grid comes with a unique set of challenges, which Professor Deepa Kundur — U of T’s chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering — is researching. Kundur’s research team focuses on how power utilities can be defended from cyberattacks, which is an important security consideration to make when introducing AI algorithms and other digital technologies to our infrastructure. 

In an email to The Varsity, Kundur wrote, “Canadas energy grid faces mounting cybersecurity challenges from the rise of advanced persistent threats (APTs), ransomware campaigns targeting industrial control systems, and sophisticated cyber-physical attacks that exploit vulnerabilities in interconnected infrastructures. As the grid evolves to incorporate renewable energy, smart devices, and advanced communications, these threats grow in complexity and potential impact”. 

Her research focuses on addressing these challenges through innovative approaches to cybersecurity in cyber-physical systems. 

Early on, Kundur explored vulnerabilities in smart grids caused by coordinated cyber-physical switching attacks — cyberattacks that target both digital systems and physical infrastructure — and cascading failures, which are a series of interconnected breakdowns in a system. 

Her more recent projects focused on integrating artificial intelligence — particularly explainable AI (XAI), which aims to make AI processes understandable to humans — into cybersecurity frameworks. “Under the Siemens partnership, [Kundur is] leading a project to integrate explainable AI (XAI) into industrial cybersecurity systems. This initiative aims to enhance decision-making transparency,” she continued in the email.

For Kundur, the partnership with Siemens Canada is a transformative step in her research journey as it will “Allow [her] to approach the problem from a new angle, focusing on how manufacturers can design and build secure systems from the ground up.” 

Security considerations will also be a key area of focus in the Siemens Canada partnership and remain at the forefront of many research projects Kundur and other professors involved in the process undertake.

The partnership is also expected to expand to sectors beyond energy systems, including AI, automation, and advanced manufacturing. By combining research and practical applications, U of T and Siemens Canada’s contributing efforts are aimed at developing a more sustainable energy system.