The Grid’s Moment of Truth: Growth, Policy, and Culture

As I explored the exhibit floor at DTECH this year, I marveled at how I wouldn’t be able to see all the people and booths I would like to in a two-and-a-half-day span. With 684 exhibitors, booths spilled into the foyer and hallways. A good problem to have, of course, as it shows our industry is thriving. But we all know why it’s thriving: The need for technology, solutions and services is more prevalent than ever before as utilities and their customers require perfect near-perfect reliability as the electricity demand grows, and as much resilience as we can get as extreme weather threatens aging infrastructure.

The other thing I marveled at was the excitement and guarded optimism among attendees and exhibitors at where the industry is going. It is so nice to get out and talk shop with other people as passionate about power as I am. But I say ‘guarded optimism’ because in the frenzy of learning about new technologies and how to work with or extend the life of current systems, some utility leaders discussed concern for the ability to meet the projected load growth without creative solutions, regulatory support and investments.

That discussion came in one of the panel sessions called “What really keeps utility executives up at 3 a.m.?” Spoiler: it’s not just load forecasts and rate cases. This panel quickly made it clear that today’s sleepless nights are driven by something much bigger: growth (load and industry), policy, culture, and the very physics of the grid.

My long-time friend Wayne Bishop, VP of Industry Outreach and Strategy at Danovo Energy Solutions (formerly Quanta Technology), set the tone by calling out the high-stakes moment utilities are in. Demand is surging, and much of it is being driven from the customer side. Customers are scrutinizing every bill, every outage, every restoration estimate. Add aging infrastructure, workforce shortages, cyber and physical threats, and suddenly “interesting times” feels like an understatement.

Affordability quickly emerged as the political and operational pressure point. SDG&E Chief Operating and Safety Officer Kevin Geraghty warned that when prices rise, policymakers rush in, often without a deep understanding of how capital-intensive, long-cycle grid planning actually works. He’s seen this before: Knee-jerk policy fixes can feel right in the moment, but they can ripple through planning, investment, and reliability for decades. And those costs? They’re showing up now, even when the policies behind them were passed years ago. Managing Editor Jeff Postelwait covered this topic in a recent in-depth story, "Rising Electricity Costs and the Impact on American Households." We will be covering much more of this topic from several different perspectives in the coming months. 

From Eversource’s perspective, Digaunto Chatterjee, senior VP of engineering, put some hard math on the table. Utilities can point fingers at generation costs or public policy adders all day long, but distribution and transmission are still squarely in utility control. If affordability is the problem, doing the same things the same way isn’t going to solve it. New planning models, faster infrastructure build-out, and real innovation are no longer optional.

Then NERC Senior Vice President and Chief Engineer Mark Lauby broadened the conversation to the scale of the entire North American grid. A projected 25% peak demand increase over the next decade, while simultaneously changing the resource mix, is the definition of rebuilding the plane while it’s flying. Retiring spinning mass, increasing weather-dependent resources, gas-electric interdependencies, and escalating cyber and physical threats all raise the same uncomfortable question: Are we planning ourselves into a corner?

But the most striking moment of the panel wasn’t about megawatts or markets. It was about culture. Chatterjee argued that utilities have never had to move at today’s velocity — and that you can’t mandate urgency into existence. Without a workforce that feels empowered to challenge assumptions, speak up, and move faster, reliability risks quietly pile up.

Geraghty closed with a reminder that was a bit old-school, and exactly right: The most important customer is the one you serve today. The most important asset is the one you operate right now. And the most dangerous failures in this industry don’t come from bad math; they come from cultures where people knew something was wrong and didn’t feel safe saying it out loud.

That’s the stuff that keeps utility leaders staring at the ceiling at 3 a.m. — and why the industry’s next chapter will need trust, speed, and courage.