This March, Erode AI joined over 700 hydropower professionals from across North America at the 2026 CEATI Hydropower Conference in San Diego. Co-founders Cody Kupferschmidt and Craig MacRitchie took the stage for Session C3.2, “What is MCP and Why Does it Matter? Context-Rich Interactions for Smarter Hydropower Operations,” as part of the Hydro Operations & Planning track.
The talk traced the history of information retrieval, from direct observation to today’s always-connected sensor networks, and made the case that access to information is only half of what hydropower teams need: decisions require context spanning hydrology, markets, operations, and experience. Cody and Craig showed how the Model Context Protocol (MCP) connects language models to operations, weather, and market data, and walked through live examples from the Erode AI Analyst, from comparing Methow River basin snowpack against the ten-year average to a post-hoc study of generation versus realized pool prices at a hydro facility in Alberta.
Thank you to CEATI International and to everyone who joined the session, asked questions, and stopped by to chat. We’re already looking forward to next year!