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Power Perspectives DTech Debrief: Are utilities becoming tech companies?

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In a unique edition of Power Perspectives this week, we take you inside the electric utility industry’s season-defining event: DistributeTECH 2025 through the lens of the Energy Central team that was there on the ground. Join Kinsey Grant Baker, Head of Content at Energy Central, and Matt Chester, Community Manager, as they unpack key themes and insights from the conference floor.

From the convergence of utilities and technology to the rising influence of AI, the conversation explores how the sector is adapting to transformative challenges. How are utilities evolving into technology companies? What does the future hold for customer-focused planning, workforce innovation, and distributed grid orchestration? Kinsey and Matt break it down with fresh perspectives and real-world examples. Whether you’re curious about the cutting-edge ideas reshaping the industry or you have FOMO because you weren't at DistribuTECH yourself, this episode delivers the takeaways you need.

 

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TRANSCRIPT

Kinsey Grant Baker:

Hello everyone and welcome to a very special episode of Power Perspectives. My voice probably sounds new to many of you. My name is Kinsey Grant Baker and I'm the head of content at Energy Central. I'm here today with a distinct and exciting. Purpose to facilitate a conversation with our very own community manager, Matt Chester, about the week we just have, we are fresh off a packed few days at distributed Tech, a sort of season defining event for the who's who of electric utility, transmission and distribution teams. The show was bursting at the seams with innovative ideas. Interesting presentations and important conversations about the future of utilities and we got to see it all up close and personal. So today we're doing something a little different on power perspectives. Matt and I are going to have a conversation all about distributed tech. What we learned, what we heard and what we thought about the past utilities. Taking toward the next era of energy, because at the end of the day, one thing is certain, that path is being carved by future oriented individuals and teams and companies. So today let's talk about some of the biggest topics they're focused on as we move forward. Matt, you had, I think, 10 expert interviews, 8 expert panels and or learning sessions at distributed. You must have put in 20,000 steps every day running around the show floor and you were generous enough to write down some major themes from D tech that dominated your cover. Situation. So I want to go through a handful of them and hear more about what you saw and learned and we'll jump in in a second. But hello, how are you doing?

 

Matt Chester:

I think I'm finally physically recovered from it at 20 K steps might have been underselling it, but it was, you know, even more so than the physical toll it was. It was a lot mentally, you know, learning the the bright lights, seeing everything going on. It was an exciting event. So there. A lot of fun stuff.

 

Kinsey Grant Baker:

To take away from it, there definitely was. I think the highlight for me was obviously meeting a ton of cool people and learning about what they do, but also all of the the activations that had sweet treats like I'm a huge sweet treat fan and there were M&M's everywhere and cookies and came home with a purse full of sugar, which was super exciting. I I told you this. But I couldn't stop talking about utilities and T&D to my husband, who's an engineer but not this kind of engineer. He's like, cool, cool, cool, cool. So what do you want for dinner? Is is very interesting to try to come back down to Earth after that because we had a lot of really cool conversations as a team. We had a couple of other members of the Energy Central team. There as well and we just couldn't stop talking about some of these big ideas. So we can start with that. I want to jump in. To some of these, these themes that emerged over the course of the week, you know, we've all shared some ideas from our team on what we thought were the big central conversations to distribute tech this year. I think personally the one that I heard the most about that really cropped up in a ton of different conversations I had was this pivot from reactive to proactive. For utility, is this shift from the the kind of like rigid models, you know, centralized models to more decentralized self? Planning ahead, kind of how we we see that shift manifests across the utility industry, I think is is something really interesting and and I know you have some some thoughts on this as well.

 

Matt Chester:

Yeah. Yeah, it's really a reflection of some of the tech driven changes I think happening to the power sector. And what are the first sessions I sat in on was with Gabriel Valdez at GE Vernon A and he's a former telecom professional newly into the utilities in the past handful of years. I wanna say it was, but. He really he set the tone for me by talking about how, you know his experience in telecom. It might seem a little bit foreign, but really that telecom industry went through. An immense transformation you think about in the 90s, early 2000s, what telecom was to what it is now and how that kind of complete reformation of the industry and what's important, what it's doing, what technology it needs that happens in front of our eyes. And now you see it in in. You know the zoom calls you have the iPhones in your pocket and and he he set the analogy that that's what the utility is doing right now and and you know. So while a lot of this is very new to us in the power sector, it's not new to industry generally. And I thought that was a a really interesting idea and. And kind of inspiring as opposed to making these changes feel daunting.

 

Kinsey Grant Baker:

Yeah, absolutely. And and not to jump ahead too much in our conversation, but it's a really good segue. You set me up for here, but this idea that we also kept talking about as a team that utilities are becoming technology companies and technology companies are becoming utilities. Is is something that's really interesting? You know, we see it in a ton of examples in our day-to-day headlines, but tell me a little bit more about how you kind of saw that. Play out at distributed.

 

Matt Chester:

Yeah, it's again. It's like I said, technology driven, which is a major theme and I think we'll talk about that a little bit more. Later, but you know, I I remember when I was first studying energy technologies in the grid and you know, smart grid was the the hot topic and you couldn't read anything without it being about smart grid and and that was very technology driven as well as, hey, we have these sensors, these monitors, these tools that allow us to do some new things, some really exciting things. We started talking about. Is it possible to have two way power flow and what does that look like and? As much as that was a smartening up of the grade compared to with where it was, it's it's fair to say we're looking at that smart Grid 2.0 right now and it's it's moving past the idea of we have this cool technology, let's put it there, see what it looks like to instead saying, well, what do we want those technologies to do? What would be cool and. Useful for, you know, call it a smart 2.0 technology to do on the grid and and and that came up time and again is right. We've evolved past even the smart grid. It's one thing to say the utilities for 100 years were stagnant and now we're advancing in tech. We're kind of in this second evolution. Where you know calling things smart is almost old school at this point.

 

Kinsey Grant Baker:

Yeah, it's interesting to think about it and in that way something that I have heard time and again in coming to the electric utility industry after not spending a lot of time here, I came from smooth, we joined the Energy Central team and started working with you not that long ago. But one of the things I've heard over and over again. Over the last 9 or so months, is this idea that the utility industry for as new as it is right and the the relative span of human history, of innovation, it is an industry that takes its time to adapt to new technologies? And I think the way that I see the utility space borrowing some of the for, for lack of a better you know turn of phrase here, the move fast and break things ethos of tech has been really interesting because if if things break, people get hurt, people might have their their power turned off, right, like they're they're actually life and death consequences. So to be able to mix. The relative speed of the tech industry to bring innovation to bear is something that's more difficult for an industry that's as heavily regulated as the utility space for an industry that has such high stakes as the utility space. So seeing the kind of convergence of tech and utilities has, I think, really been super interesting. And you know we we mentioned in the beginning tier too about the the tech companies borrowing from utility. We talk all the time now about Microsoft's nuclear deal and Amazon's insert renewable here. Deal like these big tech companies have big power needs, how they're going to meet them is something that continue to come up. There's a lot we can unpack here, but if there's any other, like tech highlights that you really want to make sure we hit on, I would love to hear it.

 

Matt Chester:

You know, I would just want to agree with what you said about the convergence of tech and utilities. And this is another point that I think we might touch on later. But the idea that the utilities that we're always seeing as full of inertia slow to me. Again, there's good reason. Not only is there the life and death consequences, but to protect those life and death consequences, they have very tight regulations and you know they they can't necessarily move with that same dexterity. But at the same time, you walk around that, that distribute tech floor, you're not going up to utility companies, you're going up to software companies. And hardware companies and. And those are the ones who can do the let's innovate. Let's try something new and see what happens. And more and more, it's the utilities going outside of their own house to those those tech companies and saying, well, what do you have for us? What can we do? And I think that willingness and ability to. Not do everything in the house, but bring in those partners is part of what's unlocking all of these new opportunities and you know the the accelerating pace of these changes.

 

Kinsey Grant Baker:

Yeah, absolutely. And and one of the key themes from a lot of these software companies that you mentioned was definitely artificial. Intelligence. Can you give us the sort of highlight reel or big themes that emerged with regard to AI?

 

Matt Chester:

For the past two conferences, it seems like everybody is here to talk about whether it's their AI tool or what AI can do, or what it might do. And I think in in year 2 of AI being the the one of the dominant. Teams kind of like I was saying, we're shifting from smart grid to smart Grid 2.0. It seems like, you know, we're not AI 2.0, but we're we're evolving what that conversation looks like and and not just slapping a a chat bot onto something cuz it's possible and seems cool. One of the interviews I did with Sabi Shandra from TCS. Tata Consultancy Services he highlighted what he saw as kind of the different integrations of AI into utility work. The first, most basic one was assistance. You know, how can AI be a support tool for workers? That is a little bit more of the chatbot opportunity. How can? Somebody in the field have a question ask A a chat bot, see what happens there. The second level as you get a little bit more sophisticated, was augmenting. You know how do you enhance the decision making from those human workers. So not only it isn't just helping the the human worker, you know understand or know the next step. It's kind of bridging. Human brain and AI brain into making you know the better of the the better than the sum of it. Hearts. And then the really forward-looking he highlighted transformation and that's that's what will come. We're seeing dabbles of it now but it'll really come in the in the following years. But the examples he pointed to were things like regulatory filings which you know are hundreds if not more pages of long documents that pull in all sorts of. Assets from across the utility enterprise and how that would take bulky teams hours and hours and hours to pull together. You can now use an AI power tool to at least get a good start there. You know he he cited 95% accuracy in reducing. Human workload in doing so, and obviously you still need the human element to review, make some final decisions and process. But we're seeing that elevation where what's the goal of AI? It's to take those rote tasks that humans don't necessarily need to be in and getting them automated so that we can get. Creative minds and creative people to do the higher level tasks. So that's that's what's what's cool to see the the shift in the AI conversation going from from the people I talked to at distribute tech.

 

Kinsey Grant Baker:

And quick plug for the people you talked to at distributed tech. Matt, I mentioned you had all of those expert interviews at the beginning of this conversation. They will all be on energy central in due time. So be sure to to check them out. I want to talk about another big one that we saw emerging as one of these key themes. I would call it the the sort of renewed focus on the end customer. It's not necessarily novel to say we wanna consider the experience of the customer in how we build and plan and strategize as a utility, but this seemed like something that a lot of people were really talking about a lot in terms of how they're essentially structuring planning as a utility. Tell me a little bit more about.

 

Matt Chester:

What you heard here? Yeah. And you're right. You know, obviously the customer has always been central to the utilities. A grid outage is bad. Why? Because of what happens to the customers and rising prices is bad because it hurts the. Customers. But time and again, the conversations brought up the idea of like now we're really focused on customer metrics and customer experience in a new way. I think part of that is one the technology getting so good that you see more reliability, you see more opportunities. So you shift towards focusing on the customer and their experience. More than ever, and part of it is, you know, as these new technologies come available. There's there's new metrics that we didn't really have to look at or think about before. And and oftentimes you know, talk about the regulation of the utility sector, the, the, the regulators look at metrics that are intended to boost the customer and make sure the customer is getting what they need and what they want. But it's almost looking like now those those. Metrics of past years are almost. Rudimentary compared to what? What matters the most and you know the the example of that that I've really opened my eyes to that the most is I was. I was speaking to a panel of Australian utility executives. They were there on in cohort with Edge 0. You'll see them on our energy central interviews at distribute tech but one of them Guy Chalkley he heads up. Endeavor. He was talking about how within Australia in his jurisdiction, there's the manufacturing plant that makes all of the IV bags for the entire country so really critical. Critical product that's needed for medical purposes all over and at some point in I think it was in the past year, but sometime recently the customer, the manufacturer came to them and said we got to talk about all these frequent outages. They're killing us and guys said I don't know what you're talking about, look at these metrics where if anything we're getting praised by the regulator. How few outages we have, we're getting all thumbs up, but what? As they started to talk, what they came to realize is that the the manufacturer had been experiencing seconds longs of outages, call them brownouts instead of blackouts, which didn't show up in the traditionally monitored metrics for the regular. Because sounds like not a big deal, the power's right back on. We don't need to worry about that. But for this manufacturer with very sensitive manufacturing equipment, what it meant was every time it went out for a second, the machines froze. They needed to be reset. All the partially created IV bags that were on that line had to be tossed. It was a huge cost to them, a huge. Issue for them, but it didn't traditionally show up in those metrics, so that was his light bulb moment that he was able to share of. Alright well. We still track those regular regulator focus metrics because it's regulated, we need to, but those aren't the ones that are on my dashboard anymore, he shared. You know, all of the KPIs I'm looking at are unregulated because they're they're going to the next level and really focusing on the customer and and that's one very tangible example. But like I said, in at least half of my. My interviews that I did, a renewed focus on the customer was top of mind. So I think we're gonna start hearing more and more stories. Like that as data evolves and and new metrics you know come to light that really focus on the customer.

 

Kinsey Grant Baker:

Yeah, absolutely. And and I remember in one of the early sessions, I sat in on at distributed this last week, the conversation about advanced metering is it's one that you can't really have without considering the actual way that people interact with the product. I think there is a lot of concern from the industry around buy in from end customers. Are people going to get this special meter put on the side of their house even if it only takes 15 minutes to install? Or are they gonna use it? Are they gonna use it correctly? All of these are, I think, big questions that lend themselves to the even bigger question of just how utility planning. Is operating today the thing that we had had written down in our prep for this conversation was top down versus market driven. This is, I think, a a critical element to how that planning, you know, comes to to be. But I would love to hear a little bit about your perspective on planning in general and and what you heard from people on the ground at distributed.

 

Matt Chester:

Yeah. The other interesting term that that I heard throw and thrown out a lot was orchestra or orchestration. You know it it and it's it's funny because it kind of mirrors a previous physical evolution of of the power sector we went. From centralized power plants that sent out the electrons all across the grid, wherever they were needed, and over the past 10-15 years, yeah, we still have those power plants, but all across the grid we have those distributed sources of generation. And so it's not just a central out, but it's kind of a whole orchestra playing together. And you know where the electrons are always being sent out before. Now, I think what we're seeing is data is kind of that. That product that's being collected, analyzed and then sent throughout the grid. It's not just, hey, let's send that data to the central brain of the operation and it'll make decisions and send it out. But you're seeing smart meters make individual decisions on their own. You're seeing edge technology that's taking in its data and. And so instead of again having one internal system that's analyzing everything, making all these. Means that AI adjacent brain is in all of these nodes and it's it's really interesting to see.

 

Kinsey Grant Baker:

And I think it it also lends itself to one of the the big conversations too, that's that's maybe a little less specific to the day-to-day business and a little bit more of a what I would say we could classify as an existential question for the utility industry. It's just that the workforce is changing as we talk about the modern needs of the modern utility and what those look like in the future. Pretty much this entire conversation we've had so far has focused on data, AI, automation, understanding how tech interacts with utilities operations. All of that requires a certain skill set, and it's not a skill set that is unlearnable, but just naturally there is a bit of a shift in the kind of workforce that we expect to succeed in the utility space. Generally, the shift is toward that more tech focus, that future orientation, and it's it's a people challenge, is how you put it. And I think that's. It's a really interesting problem that is going to require a lot of smart people trying to solve it. There's no one software provider, there's no one utility, there's no. One energy media company that's going to solve this problem, it's all again the orchestration of all of these different elements of this industry and this sector trying to figure out how we solve this people challenge. But what's your perspective on this?

 

Matt Chester:

Yeah, it it's very similar to what you mentioned earlier with, hey, you can have this smart meter, but if the customer doesn't want to put it in the tech doesn't do anything. It's the same on the workforce side. You know, we can make the best technology, but the human elements have to be able and willing to use it. And and what I'll say is is. It really stuck out to me in the past decade. It's almost become a trope of talking about the challenges of the aging utility workforce, especially when we're talking the line worker, the field worker, these type of workers who have been at the job for decades. They're the best at what they do, and maybe because they've done what they've done so well. Along there's somewhat of a resistance to new technology of well, do I really need to play with this funky iPad? I'm just gonna do it the way that's always worked for me. And and and that's been a challenge for utility executives who want that technology in there for, for good reason. It's it it cause it's not just about that one field workers job. It's how that job interacts with the entire ecosystem. So that's been a challenge that I feel like I've read on the pages of Energy Central. I've had that conversations at at distributed for many years. This conference was the first time I brought that up, kind of, you know, expecting to hear the same, uh, you know, these guys aren't doing it, but instead I was hearing excite. I mean of, you know, and actually the the workforce is shifting and naturally some of those more technology resistant people, they're reaching retirement age and we're doing our best to minimize the brain draining and extract all of their expertise. But as as they they roll out of the workforce and we're backfilling them with the younger workforce who frankly. Grew up with iPads, grew up with technology. It's not even a question of. Alright, well, now we need to convince them to use this. Those workers come in and say, alright, well, what's what's the technology solution to this? They demand it as opposed to the other side of things where where the the technology companies were feeling like they had to really hold the hand of the workers. So it's an interesting shift in dynamic where I'm seeing for the first time that optimism that all right, these technologies are being adopted, this workforce is ready more ready than it's ever been. For really adapting to the to the technologies and I think I mean that that that's coming at the perfect time because we're not, we're not just talking about maps on iPads anymore. We're talking about those iPads being filled with. Insanely impressive AI tools that can optimize and and make sure that they're doing 10 times the work that somebody was doing on their own a decade.

 

Kinsey Grant Baker:

Ago and that is urgent for a lot of reasons, not the least of which being that demand is surging. A lot of the conversation that we've had today has centered around the updates to the workforce. To the tech, to the OPS, to every part of running a utility. But I think an interesting take away that you shared is essentially a lot of these people are building the plane while they're flying it. And that's just the nature of the business, right? You have to make these upgrades. You have to make these updates. You have to improve reliability and rest. Plans, while still keeping the lights on and and that's a challenge. It's definitely a challenge. So I would love to hear just as we finish up this conversation, what you heard from a lot of these experts you spoke with about this idea of the time is now. Can't wait any longer to make these changes. What what was the vibe that you were getting from these experts?

 

Matt Chester:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean the the people are talking to, we're largely these technology companies working with the utilities and. And so in in emphasizing that, hey, at Energy Central, we're talking to the utility people. Well, what do you want them to know? What's the take away? What's the advice? And admittedly part of it could be self-serving as those technology vendors, but they were really emphasizing the idea that bring in partners bring in the experts who have done it before. It doesn't have to be me and my technology, it could be any of these. But there's so many technology partners out there who. Just like you were saying earlier, they are the ones who have who have broken things, saw what worked, saw what didn't work. So take advantage of that and you know, if if if they're. There's an inertia because of again, you know, we're seeing a more dynamic utility sector than ever before, but there there's still that echo of of slow to move and caution so they. You can start small. You don't need to say how are we transforming our entire enterprise today. It could be pick and choose where you wanna dip your toes in, see what works. I I feel like a a common message that just in any technology or innovation is don't shy away from the mistakes they're gonna happen if. Anything the the the classic adage of you learn more from mistakes so carefully and and and and thoughtfully break things, see what happens. It's like you said all about getting that start now and whether you wanna use the metaphor of building the plane while you're flying it or should you plant the tree. 20 years ago you missed your chance planet. Now the main message is it's time and it's time to to really open your mind and take some chances in the utility sector.

 

Kinsey Grant Baker:

What a way to closeout this conversation, Matt. I feel like that was the mic drop that we needed. It really is great to hear your perspectives on all of this. I really value all of the information and insights that you shared with us today, and I'm excited to read all of the wonderful. That you're going to be publishing very soon on Energy Central again, not so subtle. Plug. Go check them out. But thank you, Matt. You know, it was it was wonderful to spend the week with you in Dallas at Distributee. It's great to talk about it now. Feel like we have learned so much and I'm excited. For covering all of this in the next couple of weeks, but also for D tech next year. So we'll see you then.

 

Matt Chester:

Absolutely Yep, the the learning. Never. Stops done.

 

Kinsey Grant Baker:

Never does, never does. OK. Thanks, Matt. I'll see you. Soon.

About Energy Central Podcasts

Power Perspectives features conversations with thought leaders in the utility sector. At least twice monthly, we connect with an Energy Central Power Industry Network community member to discuss compelling topics that impact professionals who work in the power industry. Some podcasts may be a continuation of thought-provoking posts or discussions started in the community or with an industry leader that is interested in sharing their expertise and doing a deeper dive into hot topics or issues relevant to the industry.

Power Perspectives is the premiere podcast series from Energy Central, a Power Industry Network of Communities built specifically for professionals in the electric power industry and a place where professionals can share, learn, and connect in a collaborative environment. Supported by leading industry organizations, our mission is to help global power industry professionals work better. Since 1995, we’ve been a trusted news and information source for professionals working in the power industry, and today our managed communities are a place for lively discussions, debates, and analysis to take place. If you’re not yet a member, visit www.EnergyCentral.com to register for free and join over 200,000 of your peers working in the power industry.

Power Perspectives is hosted by Jason Price, Community Ambassador of Energy Central. Jason is a Business Development Executive at West Monroe, working in the East Coast Energy and Utilities Group. Jason is joined in the podcast booth by the producer of the podcast, Matt Chester, who is also the Community Manager of Energy Central and energy analyst/independent consultant in energy policy, markets, and technology.  

If you want to be a guest on a future episode of Power Perspectives, let us know! We’ll be pulling guests from our community members who submit engaging content that gets our community talking, and perhaps that next guest will be you! Likewise, if you see an article submitted by a fellow Energy Central community member that you’d like to see broken down in more detail in a conversation, feel free to send us a note to nominate them.  For more information, contact us at [email protected]. Podcast interviews are free for Expert Members and professionals who work for a utility.  We have package offers available for solution providers and vendors. 

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