Santee Cooper partners with Google in shift toward AI-driven forecasting

South Carolina public power utility Santee Cooper has announced a strategic partnership with Alphabet Inc.'s Google Cloud to implement artificial intelligence tools across its operations. The utility is integrating Google's WeatherNext 2 AI weather modeling technology alongside the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform to upgrade both load forecasting and financial planning processes. The deployment aims to address major operational cost drivers, as a single one-degree variance in weather forecasts can swing Santee Cooper's power load by roughly 100 megawatts per hour, potentially triggering up to $100,000 per hour in emergency power procurement costs. Google's inference-based WeatherNext 2 provides probabilistic forecasting up to 15 days in advance, delivering significant precision improvements over traditional physics-based models. Furthermore, Santee Cooper is leveraging Google AI to support scenario-based financial modeling for its $10 billion grid-expansion budget while deploying several hundred Gemini Enterprise licenses. This partnership highlights Google Cloud's growing enterprise adoption in critical infrastructure sectors, reinforcing Alphabet's competitive position in specialized industrial AI solutions.