2027 Event Agenda

As extreme weather becomes more frequent and severe, the utility sector is moving beyond isolated AI pilots into full-scale enterprise deployment. The ability to predict grid impacts, prepare proactively, and respond efficiently has never been more critical. This panel brings together data science and operations leaders from Exelon, National Grid, DTE Energy, and TCS to outline a clear blueprint for translating AI ambition into measurable business outcomes. Rather than treating AI as disconnected tools, the discussion connects enterprise governance, storm resilience, and field-ready generative AI into a unified vision for the modern grid.

To move from experimentation to impact, utilities need a centralized framework. National Grid’s ConnectAI serves as an enterprise hub to accelerate adoption and scale value responsibly. By organizing AI initiatives across four pillars—Capital, Asset, Customer, and Functions—National Grid ensures each use case targets high-value outcomes. In Capital, AI reduces project overruns and improves planning accuracy. In Asset management, predictive maintenance and risk-based prioritization drive efficiency. Customer service benefits from faster issue resolution, while in Functions, intelligent knowledge tools save time across the organization. This governance foundation empowers innovation while unlocking enterprise-wide data value.

Building on this, the TCS perspective focuses on one of the most critical barriers to scaling AI: data. Many utilities still operate with fragmented, siloed data across asset systems, outage platforms, weather intelligence, and customer operations. These challenges impact data quality, lineage, and real-time access, limiting AI effectiveness. Drawing on cross-utility experience, TCS will highlight practical approaches to modernizing data architectures, strengthening governance, and enabling seamless integration across IT and operational systems. The discussion will emphasize that AI at scale depends not just on advanced models, but on trusted data, industrialized pipelines, and a consistent, enterprise-wide “single source of truth” connecting the control room to the field.

With this foundation, AI’s most critical test is extreme weather. The panel will show how utilities are shifting from reactive restoration to proactive mitigation. Exelon’s Outage Prediction Model (OPM) forecasts storm-related outages with high precision by combining machine learning, weather intelligence, and operational insights. This enables stronger resilience and faster restoration through proactive planning. Similarly, DTE Energy analyzes weather patterns, vegetation exposure, and asset health to forecast storm impacts. Together, these capabilities improve situational awareness and enable faster, more effective response before storms arrive.

When outages occur, operational execution must translate into strong customer communication. Traditionally, storm response relied on manual aggregation and broad estimates, often leading to delays. Exelon transforms this with POSEIDON (Personalized & Optimized Storm ETR Information Delivery & Outage Notification). This award-winning analytics engine generates customer-specific Estimated Times of Restoration (ETRs) at the onset of a storm, supporting call centers, web platforms, and planning across all six utilities. DTE complements this with AI models that automate complaint responses and deliver proactive, visually rich updates, demonstrating how AI can reshape communication during high-stress events.

Beyond storm response, AI is also driving financial impact and operational efficiency. DTE’s computer vision reduces asset validation time by over a year and analyzes customer-submitted images to avoid unnecessary crew dispatch. Automated data integration across multiple sources supports over $500,000 in annual O&M savings and improves damage cost recovery by an additional $400,000.

Finally, the panel will explore the near future of Generative AI in the field, introducing DTE’s “Wattson.” This Reliability ChatGPT, integrated with Copilot, provides instant, natural-language access to reliability metrics across time and geography. By delivering insights on damaged assets, customer impact, and crew status, Wattson enables faster, data-driven decisions and make real-time intelligence the standard for utility operations.