Wow. 12 hand-selected, timely and relevant topical tracks designed to keep your experience organized and productive. We understand you don't want to leave a single stone unturned. So, here is your first step in prioritizing your list.
Select a conference track:
- Asset Management
- C&I and Residential Customers
- Cyber-securing the Grid
- Data-driven Digital Utilities
- DERMS
- Distribution Automation
- Energy Storage
- Electric Vehicles
- Grid Modernization Technologies
- Next-Gen Utility Business
- Resiliency Planning and Preparation
- Smart Cities/IoT
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Utility customers today — be they large commercial, industrial, or residential — expect more from utilities than just electricity and a monthly bill. They are seeking to be active participants in grid management and strategy. Customers today are a diverse crowd ranging from "just send the bill and don't bother me" to "sell me 100% renewable, battery-backed, on-site, and low-priced energy." In between these bookends are a rich set of needed utility services to improve the customer experience while at the same time influence customer behavior through demand response and efficiency programs that will defer and limit capital investment. All this with an eye toward how to preserve, diversify, and improve utility financial results.
Like every other sector of our society, utilities are exposed to a litany of threats to both their physical and cyber assets, as well as their financial well-being. The nature of the electric utility business makes generating plants, powerlines, substations and customer connections vulnerable and easily accessible to both physical and cyberattacks.
Utilities can be easily overwhelmed with the enormous amount of data being generated by intelligent devices, collected through new survey technologies, and integrated from third-party sources. Beyond acquisition and storage, utilities have been challenged to interpret all this data into meaningful, actionable information. The use-cases have been piling up for the past decade, but in the past few years significant strides have been made in deriving valuable information out of this avalanche of data. Sessions in this track will demonstrate thought leadership and best practices that deliver improved utility operations, bolstered bottom lines, and enhanced customer experience. Specific topics include: data science and analytics, cultural change, organizational and data governance, innovations and interoperability, and the journey toward a data-driven digital utility.
Successful distribution automation requires the integration and enhancement of various technologies, including smart switching and protective devices, smart sensors, intelligent controls, telecommunication protocols, devices and infrastructure, along with analytical and simulation software, to facilitate real-time decisions and meet growing customer expectations. Due to smart distribution technology implementations, software tools are being developed to integrate information from dissimilar devices and systems and summarize the information to facilitate and enhance decisions addressing reliability, DER, conservation and power quality.
Utilities have always looked for ways to increase the reliability, flexibility, security and efficiency of power delivery systems. The introduction of renewables has led to an increased focus on energy storage to address both traditional and emerging power system needs, such as to maintain/improve reliability, defer capital investments, integrate DER, enable microgrid implementation, enhance system efficiency and performance, and enable new electricity market products and concepts.
Experts predict that the grid of the future will be stronger, greener, and more resilient than ever, but what will it take to get there? The emphasis of this track centers on improving grid operations through automation, monitoring, control and optimization. Technologies such as advanced distribution management systems (ADMS), advanced metering infrastructure, microgrids and more will be discussed as tools that utilities can use to take the grid where it needs to go. 
Decarbonization, electrification, and grid modernization are on the minds of utility leaders everywhere. The transformation of the energy industry is presenting multi-dimensional challenges for utilities. New technologies, by themselves, will not be enough. The toughest problems require changes in the business model, operations model, and regulatory model.
Vegetation, weather events, and aging infrastructure are just some of the reasons that it’s harder than ever for utilities to keep the power on. Further, world events like the COVID-19 pandemic have forced all companies to put even more emphasis on keeping workers safe when disasters occur. Outage management, fleet management, GIS and mobile workforce management are all components of successful resiliency planning and can help utilities get back up and running quickly.
Smart cities are hot! Electric utilities are at the heart of the effort to bring smart technologies to street lights, sidewalks, buildings, parking lots, pedestrian safety and the list goes on. Utilities are, in many cases, providing the electric, communications and device infrastructures that form the core ecosystem upon which connected and interoperable devices are built. The emergence of smart cities is happening all over the world and expanding into smart communities and smart homes.