Bayernwerk Netz, a Regensburg-based German Distribution System Operator and E.ON subsidiary serving approximately 7 million people and managing nearly 500,000 decentralized generation plants, partnered with E.ON Digital Technology to deploy Bayernwerk AI Agents, a generative AI field operations assistant built on the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform and Agent Bricks.
Iman Soltanzadeh, Data Science Manager at E.ON Digital Technology, said: "We wanted a way to quickly surface new policy revisions and link back to the official documentation without making people dig through folders or emails." She added: "Once we had the data flowing, governance was the next big hurdle. Unity Catalog filled that gap."
The shift to agentic field operations responds to Europe's grid transformation: variable wind and solar generation, cross-border power flows, and millions of DERs now push energy through networks built for one-way traffic. DSOs must manage voltage fluctuations, safety-critical operations, and growing regulatory requirements.
The deployment evolved from GenAI pilot into a fully agentic production assistant. Bayernwerk ingested SharePoint and MAQSIMA data into Delta Lake. Databricks Pipelines extracted, cleaned, and normalized documents. Databricks AI Search retrieves chunks with verified source content in milliseconds, eliminating hallucinations. Bayernwerk AI Agents began understanding user intent and breaking down complex queries like "What's the safe procedure to replace a 20kV cable?" autonomously.
Architecture spans Delta Lake, Databricks Pipelines, Unity Catalog for permission governance, Databricks AI Search for RAG, and Agent Bricks AI Gateway for routing lightweight vs. advanced LLMs per task. RAG pipeline is grounded in verified source content with permission-aware accuracy.
Operational scale currently pilots 60 users across HSE and field operations, scaling to approximately 4,000 business users—first to around 600 field workers. Bayernwerk AI Agents support the Vision Zero goal of eliminating serious work-related accidents through rapid access to PPE, Lockout/Tagout procedures, and hazard protections.
Looking ahead, Bayernwerk plans to explore Model Context Protocol (MCP) with Databricks to standardize agent access, fold in environmental signals for pre-job awareness, and build multi-modal responses. Interest is growing across E.ON business units, positioning Bayernwerk AI Agents as a new operational standard in the clean energy era.