Future Energy: The computer brains making power plants more efficient

But these machines - power stations - are often pretty dumb, according to Peter Kirk, former chief executive of software company NeuCo. "Power plants," he says, "are just robots that don't have a brain yet." That is where his firm, acquired by GE Power last year, comes in. For years, NeuCo had been developing optimisation technologies - a form of artificial intelligence or AI - that can make power plants more efficient. The idea is to get a computer to monitor the hundreds of fine-grained controls that may be altered in, for example, a coal-fired power plant, and learn how to adjust them in a more effective way.