“The energy utilities sector isn’t known for being the quickest to embrace emerging technologies, but Nate’s leadership has brought us to the forefront of innovation,” Tsoy says, adding that Melby’s leadership has been instrumental in getting its AI initiatives up and running. “He was aware of some of the projects I had been working on for some time, and with his support, we managed to roll out some of these [AI applications] into production pretty quickly.”
Dairyland leans heavily on Microsoft but also maintains some applications on a private cloud and data centers for reliability, as part of the critical infrastructure, the CIO says.
Melby was nominated by the WisconsinCIO Advisory Board as a finalist for CIO of the year based on his leadership, effective management, and business value created through innovation, says Christa Ogilvy, executive director of ChicagoCIO and WisconsinCIO. He is “part of the brain trust” that hosted an AI strategy discussion with more than 30 CIOs in February and is one of 40 CIOs in Wisconsin who works collaboratively with peers to solve problems.
Looking ahead, Melby sees AI making a big impact on the industry’s biggest unsolved problems.
“In the electric utilities, it’s improved reliability for our generation assets, increased efficiency in our transmission systems, and is helping us be more sustainable by managing the energy transition with more renewables coming onto the grid,” Melby says, adding that “finding ways for us to make safety improvements would also be a huge benefit.”
To date, Dairyland is strategizing on ways to leverage retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), vector databases, and multimodality to create efficiency, the CIO says.
“For example, can we learn about our work environment using AI to analyze our own team’s observations of hazards and actions in the field, and use this to help us focus on the right things to improve our safety performance?” Melby conjectures. “These are the kinds of things we’re looking at, and it starts with identifying the problems that we want to solve.”
