Ministry of Energy approved professional standard for AI application in the energy sector.

The Ministry of Energy has approved a professional standard "Digitalization and Application of Artificial Intelligence in the Energy Sector" — a document designed to prepare the industry to work with technologies that just a few years ago sounded like the distant future.

The gist in brief

• The Ministry of Energy has approved the professional standard "Digitalization and Application of Artificial Intelligence in the Energy Sector," developed in accordance with the Law "On Professional Qualifications" as part of the declared Year of Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence.
• The document introduces three new professions: designer of intelligent (smart) grids, engineer for the development and implementation of artificial intelligence in energy systems (Smart Grid), and cybersecurity specialist for energy networks.
• The standard covers the electric power and heat supply sectors and establishes uniform requirements for the knowledge, skills, and abilities of specialists working with automated process control systems, dispatch and technological management systems, Smart Grid technologies, and AI-based solutions.
• The document will form the basis for educational programs and workforce training, and after publication it will be posted on the digital platform of the National Qualifications System.

Three new professions

The ministry explained the logic behind the emergence of the new specialties: "The Ministry of Energy of the Republic of Kazakhstan has approved the professional standard 'Digitalization and Application of Artificial Intelligence in the Energy Sector.' The document was developed in accordance with the Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan 'On Professional Qualifications' and is aimed at forming modern professional requirements in the sphere of digital transformation of the energy industry."

The three new professions — intelligent grid designer, Smart Grid solutions engineer, and energy network cybersecurity specialist — were developed based on Kazakhstan's Atlas of New Professions and Competencies and will be directly used in developing educational programs for universities and colleges.

Why the energy sector needs a dedicated cybersecurity specialist

The emergence of a separate profession for energy network cybersecurity specialist is not a formality. The more densely the energy system is wrapped in digital dispatch systems and Smart Grid elements, the more points it has that are vulnerable to external interference — and any failure in such a system can affect several regions or even countries at once, as we already witnessed with the August blackout that affected four Central Asian countries simultaneously. Formalizing requirements for specialists protecting such systems is a logical step given how the country's energy system is becoming increasingly interconnected and technologically complex.

Part of a broader picture of energy digitalization

The new professional standard is not an isolated initiative but an element of a broader restructuring of the industry. In parallel, the country is implementing 24 investment agreements for the modernization of energy facilities with a total capacity of 3.8 GW, the commissioning of renewable energy capacity is increasing, and at the August meeting of the Public Council on the Fuel and Energy Complex, the development of energy storage systems, distributed generation, and the updating of the hydrogen energy concept were separately discussed. Without personnel capable of designing and maintaining such digital systems, all this modernization risks running not into a shortage of funding or equipment, but into a plain deficit of qualified specialists — and it is precisely this gap that the new professional standard is designed to close.

Author's conclusion

A professional standard by itself does not train engineers — it only sets uniform requirements on the basis of which specific educational programs will then be built. The real test of this document's effectiveness will begin not now, but in a few years, when the first graduates trained under the new standards come to work at Kazakhstani energy facilities — and it will become clear whether the workforce training system is keeping pace with the speed at which the industry itself is adopting digital technologies and artificial intelligence.