Hitachi reps, reporter from Nikkei news service in Japan visit SPP

At its headquarters in Little Rock, SPP was pleased to host a reporter recently from a news service in Japan, accompanied by two representatives of the Hitachi corporation, a valued partner of SPP.

Tatsuya Mizu, a staff writer for Nikkei Business Publications based in Tokyo, traveled to the United States to profile Hitachi’s various ventures in the artificial intelligence (AI) realm.

Those ventures include one with SPP, which was announced in June 2025. The partnership is focusing on efforts to improve the efficiency of reviews of applicants for electricity generation to connect to the grid.

Mizu was joined by Masayo Kubota, chief communications officer for Hitachi’s Digital Systems & Services Division, and Akiko Ebisu, manager of corporate communications in Hitachi’s brand and communications strategy unit.

For Mizu’s interview, the group met with Casey Cathey, vice president of engineering for SPP, and Tony Green, director of engineering services for SPP.

“The trend for application volumes has dramatically gone up,” Casey told Mizu. “We were processing over 20 a year to now more than 100 a year. The processes and tools we had in place were not equipped to handle that. So, we had to come up with a multi-pronged approach. So, that’s when we started working with Hitachi.”

Cathey stressed that other measures SPP has taken have also dramatically reduced the time to evaluate generation interconnection applications. Hitachi’s AI solution, which is being implemented at SPP, will add value throughout the process by allowing a much greater number of applications to be reviewed during the same time. This will avoid clogging the queue.

“This builds in real calendar time where we can do more,” Cathey said. “It opens up a whole new world of possibilities.”

He said the genesis for the partnership began in December 2024 when SPP engineers visited Hitachi’s office in Santa Clara, Calif., where they were shown various product simulations. SPP had already worked with Hitachi on another project, so there was trust and familiarity already.

Afterward, the Japanese visitors toured the operations unit adjacent to the SPP headquarters. This is where SPP operators manage the flow of electricity on the grid.

Also participating in the meeting at SPP were Michael Hinton, global head of energy portfolio management, Hitachi Energy, and Gareth Jones, director of data and AI solutions, Method.

During the visit, the group ate lunch in the SPP cafeteria where Southern comfort food was on the menu in recognition of Juneteenth. Kubota and Ebisu presented SPP with samples of traditional Japanese candies.

• 

• 

•