In the not-so-distant past, power grids had a relatively straightforward configuration, with most households and businesses drawing energy from centralized power plants. By comparison, today’s grids are far more elaborate and decentralized, with the ongoing effects of climate change and geopolitical conflict exerting profound but unpredictable effects on both the cost of and demand for energy.

Conventional approaches to grid management are ill- suited for grappling with such complexity, but optimization strategies that leverage D-Wave’s quantum computing platforms are up to the task.