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12:00 PM
12:15 PM
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To attend this event, you must add this to your registration. The cost is $75, covering transportation to and from the facility. This can be added to your registration when registering or after by visiting the registration resource center. Step into the future of grid innovation at ComEd’s TSS114 Northwest Substation, home to the only in-service, active superconductor in the United States. This facility showcases ComEd’s pioneering collaboration with American Superconductor (AMSC) to pilot a Hig …
12:30 PM
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To attend this event, you must register separately. This event is free to attend and can be added to your registration when registering, or by visiting the registration resource center to review your existing registration. As wildfire risk and extreme weather continue to intensify, utilities must strengthen grid resilience while balancing reliability, affordability, and evolving regulatory expectations. The Wildfire & Weather Emergency Response Summit brings together utility leaders and industry …Speakers
12:45 PM
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To attend this event, you must add this to your registration. The cost is $75, covering transportation to and from the facility. This can be added to your registration when registering or after by visiting the registration resource center. Join us for an insightful tour of the Bronzeville Community Microgrid (BCM). This tour will provide an in-depth look at the 750 kW photovoltaic (PV) system installed in December 2019, which supplies solar energy to the microgrid. You'll also learn about the 50 …
4:00 PM
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To attend this event, you must register separately. This event is free to attend and can be added to your registration when registering, or by visiting the registration resource center to review your existing registration. This utility-only roundtable is a closed-door, high-level networking event that has been designed to foster collaboration between VPs and Directors to better enable regional collaboration, build strategic consensus, and address systemic energy challenges in a candid, strictly …
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To attend this event, you must register separately. This event is free to attend and can be added to your registration when registering, or by visiting the registration resource center to review your existing registration. This utility-only roundtable is a closed-door, high-level networking event that has been designed to foster collaboration among utility executives, engineers and business leaders across. Participants will be able to address and discuss the region’s unique energy challenges in …
5:00 PM
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This reception is complimentary and included with your registration; no add-on required.
7:30 AM
8:00 AM
8:15 AM
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Keeping the lights on is no longer just an engineering challenge for utilities of all types, and that’s partly because reliability isn't just one thing. It’s a dynamic endeavor that requires a complex alignment of infrastructure, operations, regulation, and training. More than that, it demands that individuals, teams, and entire organizations rethink reliability and resiliency from the ground up, which is exactly what the team at ComEd is doing. In this opening keynote, Mark Baranek, SVP of Tech …
8:30 AM
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Opening Panel: Improving Resilience and Reliability of T&D Systems: Challenges, Solutions and TrendsAs climate-driven events continue to increase in frequency and severity, electric utilities face growing challenges in maintaining a resilient and reliable distribution system. From wildfires across the Western U.S. and hurricanes along the Gulf and East Coasts to winter storms in the Northeast and extreme heat events nationwide, utilities must adapt to an increasingly complex operating environment. In response, utilities are investing in a range of resilience strategies, including grid harden …Moderator
9:30 AM
10:00 AM
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Many utilities are on track to spend around 1% of asset replacement value on their aging grid over the next decade; a 100-year renewal rate with a $600B price tag. We need innovation to help balance affordability with resilience and extreme load growth goals. What are utilities doing to extend life and upgrade the capabilities of grid assets while freeing up capital to invest in new AI and electrification infrastructure? This panel of utility asset experts will discuss the challenges of balanci …Moderator
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Utilities are modernizing faster than the controls meant to protect them. DERs are multiplying at the grid edge, operations are going remote, third parties touch more systems, and once-isolated IT and OT environments are converging — much of it on aging infrastructure never designed to be defended. This session reframes utility cybersecurity around three outcomes that resonate in the control room: reliability, resiliency, and recovery. We examine where traditional, IT-centric security breaks dow …
11:00 AM
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Omaha Public Power District (OPPD), which supplies electric power to an area of 900,000 people in Omaha, NE, has a vision of Power the Future 2050 where we strive to achieve perfect power by increasing resiliency and reliability, through using advanced technology that can monitor load usage and detect distributed energy resources. To help achieve this goal, OPPD has embarked on an overhead and underground line sensor program to gain visibility on worst performing distribution circuits. This vi …
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The modern electric grid has outgrown manual, centralized control. As utilities balance unprecedented load growth, massive distributed energy resources integration, rising cybersecurity threats, and intense affordability pressures, traditional operations are hitting a wall. To thrive in this high-complexity environment, AI needs to shift from being a productivity tool to an operational capability This session explores the concept of the Agentic Grid, where specialized, autonomous AI agents colla …
11:45 AM
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Lunch is complimentary and included with your registration; no add-on required.
12:45 PM
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Electric utilities are confronting a new reality: customer affordability has become a top strategic priority at the same time the grid is becoming more complex to plan and operate. Rapid load growth driven by AI and data centers, increasing DER integration, and heightened expectations for reliability and resiliency are placing unprecedented pressure on utility investment strategies. This session explores how Exelon is responding by rethinking the traditional approach to IT modernization and oper …
1:45 PM
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The session will discuss the utility’s plans and strategies for addressing: Capacity Reliability and resiliency DER integration To successfully navigate these critically intertwined industry challenges, utilities and their customers must work collaboratively. The more both sides understand each other’s needs and priorities, the more effectively they can achieve shared goals. A key overarching consideration is maintaining a strong focus on affordability while continuing to address these evolving …
2:30 PM
3:00 PM
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Delivering electricity across a service territory that has an estimated population of approximately 14 million people and spanning more than 54,000 square miles, Oncor operates the largest pure-play wires utility in the United States. With nearly 150,000 circuit miles of transmission and distribution infrastructure, maintaining resilience at this scale is increasingly complex as Texas experiences rapid growth, electrification, and more frequent extreme weather events. In response, Oncor is execu …
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As energy costs rise nationwide, understanding how households perceive and experience affordability is becoming increasingly urgent. This presentation will draw on a nationwide survey of 4,000 Americans to examine whether consumers recognize bill increases, understand the drivers behind them and feel equipped to manage their energy use at home. By analyzing affordability metrics across demographics and identifying barriers faced by vulnerable populations, this presentation will highlight opportu …
4:00 PM
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As climate-related hazards including storms, hurricanes, and wildfires grow in frequency and intensity, electric utilities face an increasingly difficult investment challenge: how to balance traditional reliability investments with the broader, longer-horizon demands of resilience. This panel brings together executives and operational leaders from leading utilities to explore how their organizations are making strategic infrastructure decisions under conditions of deepening uncertainty. Panelist …
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As utilities accelerate their grid modernization efforts, Tampa Electric Company (TECO) is leading the charge with its Advanced Distribution Infrastructure (ADI) program—an ambitious initiative aimed at enhancing grid reliability, flexibility, and visibility. This presentation will explore the early lessons learned from TECO’s large-scale deployment of field devices, including smart sensors, reclosers, and advanced communication networks.Join TECO leaders and industry experts as they share candi …
4:45 PM
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This reception is complimentary and included with your registration; no add-on required.
7:45 AM
8:30 AM
9:30 AM
10:00 AM
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This session is focused on AI-Driven Visual Asset Inspection. The Smart Inspection AI leverages an integrated image ecosystem that incorporates geospatial visualization, analytics, computer vision, and prioritization models to enable automated asset classification, defect detection to provide actionable and prioritized inspection insights.
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With increasing expectations of how electric utilities perform, industry professionals are being asked to evaluate and address the effects of severe weather events more effectively and more efficiently than ever. Beyond grid reliability, today’s focus on resilience requires attention not only to the direct grid impacts of hazards, but the societal impacts these events cause. This panel will highlight new ideas, tools, capabilities and metrics to provide utilities and others in the energy sector …Speakers
11:00 AM
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As extreme weather events become more frequent and severe, utilities are under increasing pressure to improve the resilience of their distribution systems. In 2014, Ameren Missouri implemented a targeted storm hardening strategy on a critical distribution line segment by strategically placing composite poles along the line. These poles, with their high rotational deflection and durability, effectively absorb the impact of severe storms while preventing cascading failures that typically cause wid …
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As utilities modernize the electric grid to address increasing demand growth, renewable integration, electrification, aging infrastructure, and extreme weather events, engineers and planners face growing challenges in maintaining both system reliability and community resilience. This panel will bring together utility leaders, industry experts, and young practitioners to discuss how transmission and distribution organizations are adapting planning, operations, and workforce strategies to ensure r …
11:45 AM
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Join us as we recognize and celebrate the innovators, leaders, and projects driving transformation across the electric grid. Enjoy lunch while honoring this year’s Grid Changer Award recipients. Lunch is complimentary and included with your registration; no add-on required.
12:45 PM
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As aging grid infrastructure struggles to keep pace with rising operational complexity and rapid load growth, utilities face increasing pressure to maintain reliability while integrating advanced digital technologies and distributed energy resources. In this session, Idaho National Lab (INL), Sandia National Lab (SNL), and Pacific Northwest National Lab (PNNL) will share a strategic roadmap developed with DOE’s Grid Deployment Office to help utilities deploy emerging digital technologies that im …
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As electric utility systems become increasingly complex and operational expectations continue to rise, the need for a highly skilled and well-prepared workforce has never been greater. Ensuring the reliability, safety, and performance of critical infrastructure depends not only on system design and technology, but also on the ability of engineers and field personnel to consistently execute work accurately, efficiently, and without error. A robust and innovative training program—spanning both lab …
1:45 PM
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As wildfire mitigation programs grow in scale, complexity, and regulatory oversight, utilities often face fragmented ownership, inconsistent prioritization, and limited visibility across engineering, vegetation management, operations, compliance, regulatory affairs, and program delivery teams. Drawing on experience supporting a North American utility, this presentation explores how an integrated, centralized Wildfire Management Organization can create a more coordinated operating model. The sess …
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As utilities and grid operators face rising demand, extreme weather, aging infrastructure, and growing affordability pressures, distributed energy resources are moving from the margins of the grid to the center of reliability planning. This panel will explore how customer-sited technologies - including batteries, smart thermostats, backup generators, microgrids, rooftop solar, and flexible load - can be aggregated and operated as dependable grid assets. Panelists will discuss what it takes to sc …
