Vestas Buys Artificial Intelligence to Boost Wind Power

The world’s biggest maker of wind turbines is moving into artificial intelligence to increase the reliability of renewable energy.

Vestas Wind Systems A/S paid $100 million in cash and debt for Utopus Insights Inc., a Valhalla, N.Y.-based AI startup that grew out of IBM’s Smarter Energy Research Institute, according to the companies. The software acquired by the Danish wind giant in the deal will help it crunch numbers to improve the uptime and revenues of wind farms.

“We can very accurately predict the weather like wind speeds, solar irradiation and predict energy production and energy demand very precisely,” Utopus Chief ...