Building the intelligence foundation for the energy transition
BKW FMB Energie AG · Switzerland
BKW, a Switzerland-headquartered energy and infrastructure company, needed a more scalable, integrated approach to working with complex weather and geospatial data to support decisions across energy production, grid management, and infrastructure services as renewable penetration and climate volatility rise. BKW partnered with Microsoft to combine Aurora (an AI weather foundation model from Microsoft Research AI for Science and Microsoft AI Weather), Microsoft Planetary Computer Pro with AI Weather Grid HD EU data catalogs, and Azure-native infrastructure (Azure Container Registry, Azure Container Apps, Azure Application Insights, and an MCP server) into a unified platform for AI-driven weather and geospatial intelligence, with BKW retaining governance over how insights are applied. The collaboration is described as an exploratory, foundation-building engagement rather than a production deployment, giving BKW's data scientists, domain experts, and technology teams a shared, governed platform and supporting its net-zero and sustainable energy goals.
Overview
BKW, a Switzerland-headquartered energy and infrastructure company, needed a more scalable, integrated approach to working with complex weather and geospatial data to support decisions across energy production, grid management, and infrastructure services as renewable penetration and climate volatility rise. BKW partnered with Microsoft to combine Aurora (an AI weather foundation model from Microsoft Research AI for Science and Microsoft AI Weather), Microsoft Planetary Computer Pro with AI Weather Grid HD EU data catalogs, and Azure-native infrastructure (Azure Container Registry, Azure Container Apps, Azure Application Insights, and an MCP server) into a unified platform for AI-driven weather and geospatial intelligence, with BKW retaining governance over how insights are applied. The collaboration is described as an exploratory, foundation-building engagement rather than a production deployment, giving BKW's data scientists, domain experts, and technology teams a shared, governed platform and supporting its net-zero and sustainable energy goals.
The challenge
BKW operates across energy production, grid management, and infrastructure services in a rapidly transforming energy landscape, and as renewable penetration rises and climate volatility increases, needed a more scalable, integrated approach to working with complex weather and geospatial data to support better decisions across disciplines. The challenge was not a shortage of data, but working with complex environmental, geospatial, and operational data at the scale and speed required to support better decisions.
The solution
BKW partnered with Microsoft to combine Aurora, the AI weather foundation model from Microsoft Research AI for Science and Microsoft AI Weather, with Microsoft Planetary Computer Pro (including the AI Weather Grid HD EU data catalogs) and Azure-native infrastructure — Azure Container Registry, Azure Container Apps, Azure Application Insights and other Azure components — into a unified platform for AI-driven weather and geospatial intelligence. A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server empowers BKW to unlock weather insights from agentic workflows with appropriate human review and oversight, while BKW retains governance, domain expertise and control over how insights are applied.
Reported business value
The collaboration is in its exploratory, foundation-building phase rather than a production deployment. BKW now has a shared, governed data and AI platform that lets data scientists, domain experts and technology teams access AI-ready geospatial and atmospheric data and iterate faster between disciplines, moving from fragmented, ad hoc experimentation toward a more coherent, reusable approach to AI-enabled analysis, and building organizational understanding toward responsible AI deployment at scale.
Sources
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