Summer heat is driving up energy demand, as Americans crank up their air conditioners amid record-breaking heat to stay safe and comfortable. Over the past two weeks, more than 200 million Americans were under extreme heat alerts, with temperatures as high as 115°F across central and eastern parts of the United States.

This led to weekly electricity output hitting record levels in early July. America’s electric companies delivered twice as much energy in seven days as New York City uses in an entire year.

EEI’s member companies work every day to deliver reliable, affordable energy to the customers counting on them, maintaining a range of initiatives to drive efficiency and lower customer costs.

Dominion Energy

Dominion Energy’s EnergyShare assistance program gives eligible customers up to $300 from June 1 through September 30 and up to $600 October 1 through May 31 to help cover cooling and heating costs. The EnergyShare program also helps customers weatherize their homes to save money long term.

“Don’t make assumptions about whether you’re eligible or not. It’s not a lengthy or arduous process. You can check it out, see if you qualify, and if not, there are other options to explore,” said Dominion Energy spokesperson Craig Carper in a statement.

Entergy Texas

Entergy Texas’ energy efficiency team partners with local contractors each year to provide customers with free air-conditioning system tuneups. They recently worked with customers in the Orange and Dayton areas and are expanding to more communities across the state of Texas. Through the CoolSaver program, technicians optimize home cooling systems by cleaning, inspecting, and adjusting key components during tune-ups.

“We know summer heat in Southeast Texas can be intense, and inefficient cooling systems can add stress to a family’s budget,” said Entergy Texas Energy Efficiency Program Manager Weslyn Brown in a statement. “These tune-ups and upgrades help improve comfort, reduce energy use and put customers in a better position during the hottest months of the year.”

Eligible customers may also qualify for weatherization improvements, including air sealing, upgraded attic insulation, and duct sealing. These services help maintain indoor comfort by keeping cool air inside and blocking heat from entering the home. The company values these services at more than $250 per unit. Due to a high volume of applications, the CoolSaver program is not accepting new applications until next year.

Duke Energy

Duke Energy helps customers manage their summer energy use with tools and programs designed to meet customers where they are. Usage Alerts help customers stay informed about their projected energy use and estimated bill amount before their next bill arrives. Customers may also be eligible for a free home energy assessment, which offers personalized recommendations to help them better understand their home's energy use and identify opportunities to improve efficiency.

“Summer can be a challenging time for many households, and our goal is to give customers simple, practical tools that help them better understand their energy use and identify options that fit their needs, lifestyle and budget,” said Duke Energy spokesperson Caroline Fountain.

Depending on where they live, customers may also have access to time-of-use rates, bill credits through demand response programs and rebates for energy-efficient home upgrades. Together, these tools and programs help customers better understand their energy use and find options that fit their household needs, lifestyle and budget. Program availability varies by location, so customers should check the offerings available in their area.

Resources and Tips to Help Reduce Energy Bills

Electric companies across the country are also proponents of the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which helps qualifying customers with their energy bills. August is LIHEAP Action Month, when EEI and the National Energy & Utility Affordability Coalition raise awareness about LIHEAP and advocate for continued federal funding for the program.

Learn more about how EEI’s member companies keep electricity prices low during LIHEAP Action Month and throughout the year. 

There are also simple ways you can save energy and money while simultaneously keeping your home cool. EEI and our member companies encourage customers to follow these seven energy efficient tips in the summer:

• Service Your AC: Schedule a professional tune-up and replace filters as recommended.
• Use a Smart Thermostat: Program temperatures to improve comfort and reduce energy costs.
• Keep Airflow Clear: Make sure vents and the outdoor AC unit are free of obstructions.
• Cover Windows: Close blinds, curtains, or drapes on sun-facing windows to reduce heat gain.
• Switch to LEDs: Use LED bulbs and take advantage of natural daylight when possible.
• Seal Air Leaks: Caulk and weather-strip cracks and openings to keep cool air inside.
• Cook Smarter: Grill outdoors or use a microwave to minimize indoor heat.

For more tips on how to save energy during the summer, check out EEI’s More Than 100 Ways to Improve Your Electric Bill booklet.

“We know it feels like every bill is higher right now – from housing to groceries to power – and that can put a strain on families. We also understand that our customers depend on us to provide safe, reliable energy, day in and day out, at the lowest possible price," Duke Energy Florida State President Melissa Seixas said in a statement. “This is the third rate reduction for our customers this year, supporting our commitment to delivering positive outcomes that have a real, tangible impact on their wallets and in their lives.”

The reduction reflects the difference between anticipated storm cost recovery related to hurricanes Debby, Helene, and Milton, and what the company actually incurred. Rates were reduced for a similar reason in February. Duke Energy Florida also cut rates in March, as it does every year, to support customers during a period when energy use is typically higher.

Additionally, Duke Energy Florida estimates its customers will save more than $1 billion from infrastructure investments the company made last year to expand its generation portfolio, upgrade natural gas plants, make infrastructure more weather-resilient, and deploy self-healing grid technologies.

Across the country, EEI member companies will invest more than $1.4 trillion during the next five years to make the grid stronger, more resilient, and more efficient – allowing them to meet rising energy demand while continuing to deliver the reliable, affordable energy that customers count on. They will invest more than $238 billion this year alone.

Many, like Duke Energy Florida, are also freezing or reducing rates. In March, Pacific Gas and Electric Company lowered electric rates for the fifth time since 2024. In May, Georgia’s public service commission approved a plan to lower rates by roughly $50 per year for the typical residential customer after previously instituting a multi-year rate freeze, thanks in part to Georgia Power’s work with data center developers. Similar rate freezes have been approved in Alabama and Iowa and proposed in Michigan.

A recent study from Concentric Energy Advisors (CEA) identified the grid’s 22,000 generators, 55,000 substations, 642,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines, and 6.3 million miles of distribution infrastructure as “the enabling platform for economic and national security,” delivering “reliable power to all sectors of the economy, including essential services such as defense, emergency response, water systems, and communication.”

Since 1922, the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) has presented the Edison Award, which annually recognizes a member electric company for leadership in innovation and excellence in grid operations.

An independent panel of reviewers evaluated nominations for the 2026 Edison Award and selected The AES Corporation, Baltimore Gas & Electric, and Duke Energy as finalists.

“This year’s Edison Award finalists exemplify how EEI’s member companies are committed to developing and deploying innovative technologies and solutions that are enhancing grid reliability while lowering operating expenses,” said EEI President and CEO Drew Maloney. “Our members are meeting this critical moment in our industry through smart investments and a continued focus on powering the energy of every day for the customers and communities we serve.”

The winner of the 98^th Edison Award will be selected by a panel of former electric company chief executives and then announced during EEI 2026, the association’s annual conference and thought leadership forum, to be held June 2-4 in Las Vegas.

Read on to learn more about this year’s finalists.

The AES Corporation

• Strengthening Workplace Safety With Haven Safety AI

Crew and customer safety is a top priority for the electric power industry, and The AES Corporation has significantly strengthened workplace safety through its partnership with Haven Safety AI.

The new AI tool, which AES co-developed, takes large amounts of safety incident data and turns it into rapid, evidence-based root cause analysis (RCA) findings within hours of an incident occurring. This has reduced the amount of time AES employees spend on RCA investigations by 80 percent.

The platform’s insights also inform proactive, corrective actions across high-risk field work, which have improved the company’s prevention and operational resilience. In addition to providing incident-specific data and analysis, the platform also evaluates the data for leading indicators, emerging risks, and pathways to system-wide corrective actions.

By utilizing Haven Safety AI, AES is spending less time on incident reports and more time in the field advancing safer, smarter, and more efficient energy operations.

Baltimore Gas & Electric

• Improving Reliability Through Automatic Restoration Capabilities

Over the past six years, Baltimore Gas & Electric (BGE) has deployed motor-operated switchgear (MOS) into its auto-restoration system (ARS), expanding the system’s capabilities to underground feeders and addressing a gap in BGE’s distribution automation strategy.

MOS offers a cost-effective solution to automatically restore customers on underground feeders, which make up 66 percent of BGE’s primary distribution lines. Between 2020-2025, BGE installed 144 MOS devices onto its distribution system to monitor the technology’s performance and impact on customer reliability. After a successful field pilot, BGE incorporated the MOS devices into its ARS—a pivotal integration that created customized feeder configurations and automated restoration algorithms. The technology also seamlessly integrates with both new and existing infrastructure.

BGE’s MOS deployment has avoided more than 5,000 service interruptions for customers in the past year, underscoring how BGE has utilized these cost-effective, “self-healing” tools to improve customer reliability.

Duke Energy

• DeBary Hydrogen Production and Storage System

Duke Energy’s DeBary Hydrogen Production and Storage System is a first-of-its-kind, end-to-end facility that produces, stores, and combusts up to 100-percent green hydrogen generated from solar energy.

Powered by Duke Energy’s DeBary solar facility, two 1-megawatt (MW) electrolyzers split water into oxygen and hydrogen. The hydrogen is captured and stored on-site—then used as on-demand fuel for a peaking combustion turbine upgraded to run on a natural gas-hydrogen blend today, with the capability for 100-percent hydrogen combustion.

In December 2025, DeBary set a world record—generating 50 MW using 100-percent green hydrogen combustion—proving the technical feasibility of this approach and setting a new benchmark for the industry. By converting excess solar energy into stored hydrogen, Duke Energy’s DeBary system transforms Florida sunshine into on-demand power that strengthens grid reliability and helps keep costs as low as possible for customers.

Nelson Peeler, Duke Energy Senior Vice President for Grid Strategy, Planning, and Integration, stressed to lawmakers that “large new electricity customers, if integrated into the grid responsibly, present local economic development opportunities and can limit rate growth by spreading the fixed costs of the grid across a larger base.”

Watch a recording of the hearing, and see below for highlights and key takeaways:

1. The Regulated Business Model Benefits Customers.

Electric Perspectives:

2. Companies and Regulators Are Protecting Customers From Added Costs.

Electric Perspectives:

3. One-Size-Fits-All Data Center Solutions Are Unrealistic.

Electric Perspectives:

4. Grid Investment Will Be Critical to Meeting Demand.

Electric Perspectives:

5. Grid-Enhancing Technologies Are Making the Most of Existing Assets.

Electric Perspectives:

Duke Energy recently received a waiver from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for a single pilot to operate up to four drones beyond visual line of sight—a key designation that will give the company greater flexibility to deploy uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) to protect and maintain the energy grid.

Duke Energy began using drones for storm response in 2015, strategically integrating the technology into its operations. In 2024, drones were used to help reconductor a transmission line in Shelby, N.C., following Hurricane Helene—allowing crews to complete a potentially dangerous and time-consuming task safely and in a matter of hours.

Commercial drone deployment is overseen by the FAA, and certain activities and use cases require specific waivers, including automated, defined flight paths for inspecting infrastructure. Duke Energy already held a waiver allowing its pilots to operate drones beyond visual line of sight—enhancing efficiency and safety and decreasing reliance on ground crews, bucket trucks, and crewed aircraft like helicopters for infrastructure inspections and storm damage assessments. With the company’s new FAA waiver, a single pilot will now be able to operate multiple drones beyond visual line of sight.

Electric companies have increasingly embraced drone technologies to safely and efficiently inspect infrastructure, assist in storm response, and mitigate risks for lineworkers—particularly when high-resolution cameras, light detection ranging sensors, and thermal sensors are implemented.

This is the latest example of an EEI member company utilizing drones to enhance inspections while lowering costs. Dominion Energy is one of several electric companies using a combination of drones and AI to more frequently inspect infrastructure and more quickly make maintenance decisions. The Southwestern Electric Power Company, meanwhile, is using drones to assist in tree trimming and vegetation management efforts in Louisiana and Texas.

Last year, Southern Company received FAA approval for UAS flights beyond visual line of sight to monitor energy infrastructure, assess storm damage, and respond proactively to potential issues with the energy grid.

Florida Power & Light, similarly, began flying its FPLAir One drone in 2022. At the time, it was the first fixed-wing drone of its size to be operated commercially outside of an FAA test site. Xcel Energy was the first to receive FAA approval to utilize UAS technologies to survey transmission lines back in 2018.

Standing in a field surrounded by dozens of 40-foot power poles, hundreds of lineworkers, and thousands of spectators, Eversource Energy linemen Bob Michaud and Jason Henley looked and spoke as if they’d just wrapped another day at the office.

In some sense, they had.

“We did pretty well this year,” said Michaud, underselling his and Henley’s ability to scale power poles to retrieve eggs, place them in their mouths, and descend without cracking them more quickly than any of the roughly 300 teams they competed against in mid-October at the 41st International Linemans’ Rodeo.

The annual gathering in Bonner Springs, Kan., celebrates the lineworking trade and the more than 100,000 brave men and women who build and maintain America’s energy grid as electrical lineworkers. A group of 19 investor-owned electric companies sponsored this year’s event, and they and many others regularly send their best crews.

Teams of lineworkers compete in a series of skills challenges—including the pole climb, or “egg climb,” and the hurtman rescue, in which lineworkers retrieve suspended manikins to simulate assisting an injured crewmember. Contestants also compete in a series of mystery events that aren’t revealed until the night before the rodeo.

“The weather played in our favor. It was a nice warm day, maybe a little too hot,” Michaud said following his and Henley’s first-place finish in the pole climb. “Thank God it didn’t rain. We’ve had that in the past. We’ve had freezing cold weather. That all plays a part.”

Michaud and Henley have 42 years of collective experience between them maintaining energy grid infrastructure and 30 trips down to Kansas for the International Lineman’s Rodeo. They were far from the most senior lineworkers competing for bragging rights and recognition at the annual post-rodeo banquet. But, they were hardly the youngest, either, with apprentice linemen in their 20s also testing their mettle against peers from across the United States and Canada.

“This rodeo is a celebration of a craft that many would never venture into,” Virgil White, a distribution line construction supervisor at Evergy, said to rodeo participants during the opening ceremony. “Life literally is energized by the work provided by each one of you.”

‘We Do This Work Every Single Day’

Adam Beene, a restoration field operations manager with Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E), competed in his 12th rodeo over the weekend. He and many other participants attended company-specific or regional rodeos earlier in the year to qualify for the International Lineman’s Rodeo. Interest in competing is high among lineworkers, competition is fierce, and team spots are limited.

Although there’s some practice associated with individual events, Beene stressed that there isn’t much competitors see at the rodeo that they don’t see out on the job.

“What we do every day is great training. We do this work every single day as linemen building and maintaining powerlines,” Beene said.

Beene joined PG&E 24 years ago, describing lineworking as a “great trade that’s been really good for me and my family.”

“My grandpa was a lineman. My dad was a lineman. My brother is a foreman. Combined, we have something like 150 years total service in the field as linemen working for PG&E,” Beene says. “It’s a lifesaving service that we do. We keep society going.”

Those familial ties are common among lineworkers, adding to the sense of pride and tradition associated with the job.

“My father-in-law worked on a line crew. I found it very interesting, because I like working outside and working in the elements,” says Sandy Barnhill, a 37-year lineworking veteran and distribution engineering manager at Duke Energy. “If you love helping people, helping your community, and being an integral part of your community, this is a great career.”

Barnhill and others note that, although the rodeo is meant to be a fun and informative display of skill, the work is not easy, and the risk of injury is ever-present.

“Anybody that gets into this trade, if you have a passion for linework, you’ll excel. But, make sure you have the passion for it. This is a deadly job,” says Eversource Energy’s Michaud.

To drive home the emphasis on safety, judges at the rodeo watch contestants closely and deduct points if they perform maneuvers deemed to be unsafe.

“What makes anyone good at this job is safety. That is the most important thing,” says Chad Guthrie, director of distribution construction operations at OG&E. “There are years of training, and it’s not just training that happens one time early in your career. It happens constantly throughout your career.”

‘Today, We Have Focused on Today’

Barnhill, whose Duke Energy team placed first in the 45-and-up senior division this year, first attended the rodeo in 2001 but hasn’t made it every year. Based out of Fuquay-Varina, N.C., near Raleigh, Barnhill and his colleagues are regularly called when storms strike the East Coast, which isn’t uncommon this time of year.

That was the case in 2024, when Hurricanes Helene and Milton devastated portions of Duke Energy’s service territory and the broader East Coast. Instead of traveling to Kansas, Barnhill and his colleagues were focused on recovery and restoration, particularly in western North Carolina, where storm damage was catastrophic.

“We worked all in the mountain zone, around Spruce Pine, Burnsville, Asheville, back towards Black Mountain. The devastation that was there was mind blowing—something like I had never seen,” says Barnhill, who grew up in the Asheville area. “I’ve worked storms my whole career, going all the way back to Hurricane Hugo in 1989. This one was more impactful than anything I had ever seen.”

An army of more than 50,000 workers from all over the United States and Canada deployed to the Southeastern United States last year to assist the response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton. Crews spent weeks—in some cases months—helping communities rebuild following the storms. Those efforts and the devastation those crews worked through was still top of mind for many in Kansas.

“Today, we have focused on today. We have been ecstatic over the course the hurricanes and storms have taken this year,” says Barnhill, noting that this has been a quieter storm season on the East Coast.

Mutual assistance work is a hallmark of the lineworking trade, and, although they work in dangerous and difficult conditions, many lineworkers develop friendships over the years that they’re able to spark up again at events like the rodeo.

“You get all the companies out here that you go to work with during storms and hurricanes. There might be times you meet people during storms or at other events, so there’s a lot of camaraderie here,” says Chris Bristol, an OG&E manager of distribution construction. “There’s a little bit of trash talking that goes on. But, it’s all camaraderie.”

‘It’s a Big Family’

Todd Scheitel, a MidAmerican Energy transmission and distribution construction manager from Council Bluffs, Iowa, pulled into the parking lot of the rodeo grounds at 4:15 a.m. the day of the competition.

“We started cooking breakfast to get meals ready for all the competitors, the support staff, the family members,” said Scheitel, stepping away from the grill he would later use to cook a lunch of hamburgers and bratwurst for the MidAmerican Energy group and the broader team from parent company Berkshire Hathaway Energy.

Scheitel is a former rodeo competitor who attended his first event in 2003. He’s now one of hundreds who travels to Kansas each year in a support role, helping handle food and logistics for lineworkers competing in what many of them consider to be their Super Bowl.

“My favorite part of this rodeo is the camaraderie, the family, the friends. There are some guys who I only get to see this time of year,” he said. “To see the guys I used to work with, climb poles with, do transmission and distribution work with, it’s fun. It’s a big family.”

It’s a big family event, to be sure. Many companies encourage lineworkers to bring their loved ones to join in the festivities and get a front-row seat to what they do on the job. There are hayrides, bucket truck lifts, and children's events throughout the day to keep what could be the next generation of lineworkers interested and entertained.

“A good part of the rodeo is that you get to show the skills you learn on the job. The best part of the rodeo is that your families get to see what you do every day,” says OG&E’s Bristol. “There’s such a family atmosphere here. You’re competing to show that you’re better than everyone else. But, your family gets to see it, as well. That’s the best thing for me.”

As rodeo competitors, judges, support crews, families, and spectators began packing up for the day, Eversource Energy’s Henley stood in front of the poles he and Michaud had successfully scaled earlier that day.

Henley speaks with humility—until asked about his son, a 21-year-old overhead lineman apprentice in his first year on the job.

“Every day he comes home, it’s great conversation. We get to talk about what he did, and it brings me back to when I was an apprentice,” Henley says.

Henley’s son was not at the International Lineman's Rodeo this year but has recently competed in smaller rodeos. “I think I was more nervous than him” during his first event, Henley says. “He did a great job.”

“I just want to put my stuff on and go climbing with him. He’s doing his thing and working his way up, and I hope he does just as well or better than me,” he says.

The CenterPoint Energy Foundation in August donated $1 million to the Salvation Army to support emergency response in the Greater Houston area—part of investor-owned electric companies’ broader efforts to build and support crisis-response frameworks in the communities they serve.

“The CenterPoint Energy Foundation believes in the power of collaboration to build stronger, more resilient communities,” CenterPoint Energy's Executive Vice President and General Counsel Monica Karuturi said in a statement. “We know that these emergency situations can happen at any time.”

The five-year grant will help the Salvation Army serve vulnerable populations, including families, youth, seniors, and the unsheltered during crises and extreme weather events.

It’s the foundation’s latest effort to foster resilience across CenterPoint Energy’s service territory. Earlier this year, the CenterPoint Energy Foundation facilitated the donation of more than 20 backup generators to strategically significant locations throughout Houston and the surrounding counties. The foundation worked with state and local officials and Texas Offices of Emergency Management to ensure these generators would support the distribution of essential services like medical care, water, and food during emergencies.

EEI member companies invest heavily in the energy grid, building and fortifying critical energy infrastructure to withstand threats of all kinds. Additionally, lineworkers from EEI member companies are on the front lines during storms and other disasters, working to quickly restore power and hope when Mother Nature is at her worst. EEI issued its annual Emergency Response Awards in September, recognizing more than two dozen member companies that put forth outstanding efforts to safely and efficiently restore service to the public following a storm or natural disaster.

Behind the scenes, however, CenterPoint Energy is one of many electric companies investing heavily in their communities. During National Preparedness Month in September and throughout the year, EEI member companies are critical to crisis planning and community resilience projects, supporting local response networks and first responders.

The Duke Energy Foundation in June announced plans to commit $1.5 million through the 2025 Helping Emergency Response Organizations (HERO) grant program to boost community readiness and resilience, supporting local agencies and the American Red Cross throughout the company’s service territory in North Carolina, South Carolina, Indiana, Florida, Ohio, and Kentucky.

The grants will support first responder training and the purchase of lifesaving equipment and technology to help during weather-related disaster planning and response.

“These grants are an investment in the resilience of our communities,” said Duke Energy Foundation President Amy Strecker. “When the unexpected strikes, our partners on the front lines need resources they can rely on—and we’re proud to help power their efforts.”

In September, Black Hills Energy issued $135,000 in Funds for Firefighters safety grants across Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wyoming. The grants are designed to help local fire departments purchase protective equipment, specialized tools, and other first responder essentials.

“At Black Hills Energy, we believe that when we invest in those who protect our communities, we’re building a stronger, safer future for everyone,” Kevin Jarosz, vice president of Black Hills Energy Nebraska and Iowa operations, said in a statement.

Similarly, the We Energies Foundation announced in August that it would issue grants totaling $100,000 to help local first responders purchase lifesaving equipment and strengthen public safety. Since 2020, the We Energies Foundation has donated $500,000 to help police, fire, and emergency medical services agencies improve public safety across Wisconsin and Michigan.

“We are honored to continue our support of public safety agencies and the invaluable impact they make every day,” said We Energies Foundation President Beth Straka. “The important tools we help provide our first responders—from vital medical devices to heavy-duty equipment—can be critical in keeping people and our communities safe.”

Electric company-led community resilience projects can take many forms. Some come as one-time donations or grants, while others are set up to provide ongoing financial support over a longer period of time. The Portland General Electric Foundation in 2021 established the Responsive Philanthropy Fund to swiftly address community needs following crises. During a winter ice storm last year, the Fund distributed $50,000 to nonprofits that provided warming shelters and basic needs like food, clothing, and housing assistance to impacted customers.

Additionally, 2025 marked the eighth year of an ongoing partnership involving Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) and the California Fire Foundation. Through the partnership, $950,000 in grants will be issued this year to California-based fire departments and community organizations in support of wildfire safety and preparedness projects. And, PG&E and the PG&E Foundation committed $1.65 million to support the state’s Wildfire Safety and Preparedness Program, which raises public awareness about wildfire safety and delivers resources to underserved communities in high fire-risk areas.

“The projects that these grants fund, such as creating defensible space, enabling fuel-reduction programs, and conducting fire-safety outreach campaigns, are essential across our service area and especially within underserved communities,” PG&E Senior Vice President for Wildfire, Emergency, and Operations Mark Quinlan said in a statement.

EEI member companies know that resilience is a team sport—and that effective and productive partnerships with government officials and local leaders produce better outcomes for customers when disaster strikes.

“These partnerships help ensure an efficient response, using the strengths and resources of both industry and government to restore power quickly and to support storm-affected communities and customers,” Southern Company Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Stan Connally wrote in an article for Electric Perspectives earlier this year. “By working together, we can mitigate the impact of disasters, enhance resilience, and expedite recovery efforts.”

Through their long-standing partnerships with federal, state, and local leaders and their ongoing engagement in mutual assistance, EEI member companies are actively engaged in crisis preparation and response efforts throughout the year. And, their engagement with the CEO-led Electricity Subsector Coordinating Council allows them to coordinate with government partners at the U.S. Departments of Energy and Homeland Security and the National Security Council to ensure industry and government alignment in preparing for and responding to national-level disasters and threats.

Learn more about the industry’s resilience initiatives at eei.org/mutual-assistance.

Harry Sideris is president and CEO of Duke Energy, having served in various leadership roles at the organization for nearly three decades.

Sideris recently joined the Electric Perspectives podcast to discuss his vision for Duke Energy and reflect on the devastating 2024 hurricane season.

Following is an abbreviated transcript, lightly edited for length and clarity. To listen to the full episode and catch up with other recent interviews, visit electricperspectives.com/podcast.

Electric Perspectives (EP): You’ve had a long career in the energy industry and at Duke Energy. Tell us about your career journey and how your background is shaping your leadership of the company?

Harry Sideris (HS): I've had the honor and privilege of working for Duke Energy and its predecessors for almost 30 years. It all started with responding to a classified ad in the newspaper. I know that's a foreign concept to people today. That's how I ended up getting my job at Carolina Power & Light (CP&L) back in 1996.

As an engineer, I thought I was applying for a job at a power plant, solving mechanical, chemical, and process issues. I quickly learned there was so much more to working at CP&L and in the power industry. Our product is so vital to life. I fell in love with the sense of purpose I got coming to work every day, knowing that I was making a difference and that our product had a real impact.

At Duke Energy, our purpose is to power the lives of our customers and the vitality of our communities. Throughout my 30 years here, I have seen our employees volunteer with their communities, teach children about electricity at schools, and support vulnerable customers working to provide for their families. Seeing those efforts firsthand is something that I love about our company.

I've had 20 different roles at this company. I've done a little bit of everything, so I feel perfectly suited to running each and every aspect of our business, providing reliable and affordable service to our customers.

EP: What is your vision for Duke Energy, particularly as the energy landscape continues to rapidly evolve?

HS: My vision for Duke Energy is simple: We want to continue to operate as the premier electric company, with a reputation for reliable and affordable service for our customers. We want to be the company that people want to work for, where they can build meaningful and prosperous careers and feel empowered to make decisions that serve their communities.

We put customers first in everything that we do. We're ensuring reliability while serving our customers at the lowest possible cost. We are a company that's there for customers, both when a storm hits and when times are good.

We are mindful of the vast array of stakeholders out there, including regulators, politicians, large customers. We want to be known as an honest broker that contributes to energy policy discussions while looking for ways to make the communities and the states we serve better through economic development.

Finally, we strive to be a company that investors believe in and trust to deliver results and value—that they want to be invested in for the long term. With the demand growth that we're seeing, we're blessed to serve some of the fastest-growing states in the country. We are prepared for this moment, serving our customers and meeting this dynamic growth.

We are working directly with stakeholders and our states, and we're doing some great things. Earlier this year, we announced a contract with GE Vernova that will allow us to reserve gas turbines, which will allow us to move quickly and meet this explosive growth. In June, we announced the largest economic development project in the history of North Carolina, partnering with Amazon Web Services on a data center campus in Richmond County. It's a $10 billion investment that will create 500-plus jobs. Particularly in a rural community, that's going to have a huge impact.

EP: You’ve been outspoken about Duke Energy’s storm response work. Last year, Hurricane Helene’s destructive winds and catastrophic flooding devastated the Carolinas and several other states that you serve. What can you share about Duke Energy’s response and recovery efforts following Helene and how that informs your work today?

HS: We had quite the fall last year. We had three storms back-to-back-to-back: Debby, Helene, and Milton. All hit Florida, and all moved up the coast into the Carolinas. Helene, which was the most destructive of the three, hit all seven states that we serve. We saw 3.4 million outages during Helene and 5 million across the three storms combined.

I'm so proud of our team and how they responded to all these storms, particularly Helene. No one could have imagined the destruction that we saw in western North Carolina and upstate South Carolina. I grew up in Asheville, N.C., so it was personal for me to see the destruction, to think about 18 feet of water coming down the valley, washing out our substations, our poles, our homes, and our cars. It was just so devastating. In upstate South Carolina, there aren’t very many trees left from that storm. It seemed like every one of them was toppled last fall.

I joined our teams on the ground soon after the storms passed. It was heartbreaking to see some of the sites where, as a kid and as a teenager, I used to drive around. Seeing the destruction where my dad worked, where I set up my first bank account when I was 5 years old—it was very impactful to us.

We have a mantra here at Duke Energy that everybody has a storm role. So, when something like this happens, all 26,000 people at the company get behind it and work tirelessly, sometimes 16-plus hours a day, to make sure that we're getting the lights back on for our customers. That’s what really helps them find a sense of normalcy to start rebuilding.

The Duke Energy Foundation also did a tremendous job supporting our local communities—supporting food banks, many of which were washed out by floodwaters. We partnered with these communities that we've been a part of, in some cases, for more than 100 years, making sure they rebuilt and rebuilt well. We've been at it for the past year, because this work doesn't end when you get the lights on.

EP: Following the storms, Duke Energy replaced 16,000 poles, 13,000 transformers, and more than 9 million feet of wire. That’s a tremendous amount of work that your team undertook.

HS: It was unbelievable. We had to move poles in with helicopters, because roads were washed out. The amount of wire that we replaced would have been long enough to stretch from Charlotte to Denver.

And, in a lot of these impacted areas, the level of damage was just something we had never experienced before. Roads were completely washed out. Crew quarters didn't have running water, because Asheville did not have water for almost two months. We made it a priority to serve our lineworkers and our employees on the ground, making sure they had what they needed to be successful in their restoration.

EP: What can you share about the grid enhancements and broader resilience work that Duke Energy is leading now?

HS: I always say that the grid is the eighth wonder of the world. It is truly an engineering marvel in how it handles the puts and takes of the system—how it serves customers and handles extreme weather, particularly during hurricane season but also during ice season.

We've invested $70 billion to upgrade the grid across our service territory. We are installing smart devices, replacing wooden poles with concrete and metal poles, building flood protection around our substations.

We're also continuing to invest in technology. Our self-optimizing grid technology is something we've been focused on—I call it the GPS for the grid. When something happens, it's able to reroute power around the issue, saving many, many hours of customer outages. Last year alone, we avoided 1.5 million outages by quickly rerouting power.

We plan to invest more than $100 billion in our grid during the next decade, continuing to strengthen it, make it smarter, and help us meet demand growth. We're all in on making sure that eighth wonder of the world continues to operate reliably and affordably for our customers.

EP: How do you and your team think about balancing the investments that are needed today with maintaining affordability for customers? And, how are you discussing this with customers?

HS: : Affordability is front and center on every customer's mind. A lot of folks are struggling to make ends meet. We've always focused on reliability and affordability as we meet our customers’ needs, and it's no different now. We always look at what is the most reliable solution—but also what is the lowest-cost way we can deliver that reliability.

We continue to look for other opportunities to support our customers and lower their bills. Earlier this year, we worked with our partners in Washington to ensure that the $500 million in tax credits earned by our nuclear plants—which are safe, reliable, and cost effective—flow directly back to customers annually to help offset investment.

We're also focused on working with data centers and other customers with substantial energy demands. We are making sure that these large loads pay their portion of infrastructure investments, so that work doesn’t drive up bills for residential customers.

And, we spend a lot of time focusing on our vulnerable customers—those that have the greatest financial need. We distribute more than $130 million per year in federal and local assistance to help customers pay their bills, and the Duke Energy Foundation works directly in our communities to help vulnerable customers working to make ends meet. Electricity is a vital part of everybody's life.

EP: Duke Energy is a key driver of economic development in your service territory. How are you meeting growing energy demand while supporting and creating new opportunities for your communities?

HS: We are truly blessed to serve the communities that we do in the Southeast and Midwest. They are some of the fastest growing regions in the country. We have added more than 200,000 customers two years in a row, and we are on pace to do so again this year.

A lot of people are migrating here. We also have a lot of manufacturing facilities going in, and plants and data centers are expanding. It feels like everywhere we turn, there are opportunities to add data centers. We are focused on moving quicker, working with customers, and meeting the moment.

We are truly at the front and center of economic development. We will help create more than 160,000 jobs on an annual basis, based on our investment plan going forward. That activity will generate more than $130 billion in labor income and $370 billion in overall economic impact.

EP: “Calm is contagious” is one of your mantras. What does that phrase mean to you, and how does it influence your leadership style?

HS: I wish I had made that up myself. I stole it from the Navy Seals. That is their mantra as well. Calm is contagious because, when you're on a mission, you don't need people to be nervous. You don't need people to overreact. You want to be in lockstep. You want to have clarity of thought as you're making decisions. I think that's a core leadership principle here at Duke Energy.

We're in a high-stakes industry, and we have to have clear thinking, sound decision making, and effective action, particularly during a storm or when we’re under pressure. We need to stay calm, involve all stakeholders, talk to customers and regulators, and make sure our employees have a voice. That empowers everybody to come up with the right decision and avoid the bad decisions. “Calm is contagious” is something I've always subscribed to in my career, and I think it serves us well.

Since 2022, the Foundation, Duke Energy, and its employees and customers have contributed more than $11 million to local nonprofit initiatives through the Share the Light Fund, helping connect customers with qualifying aid. 

“We know that behind every request for assistance is a story—a family, a friend, a community member working to get through a tough time,” Duke Energy Foundation President Amy Strecker said in a statement. “Through Share the Light Fund and our local partners, we’re able to support our neighbors in their moment of need.” 

At the same time, new programs and incentives are giving Duke Energy customers more control over their energy usage and costs. In addition to home weatherization and free home energy assessments, the company offers payment plans, due date extensions, and a Payment Assistance Finder. Monthly usage alerts also help customers track their energy consumption mid-cycle so they can adjust before the next bill arrives, and Duke Energy provides summer heat relief by helping connect eligible seniors and individuals with disabilities with fans or air conditioners. 

Visit EEI’s Energy Affordability hub for more information about what local resources may be available in your community, including eligibility for the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, and for EEI’s guide to more than 100 ways to improve your electric bill, including energy efficiency updates and actions that you can take to help manage your bill. 

In July, representatives from EEI, CenterPoint Energy, Dominion Energy, Duke Energy, Entergy, Florida Power & Light, Southern Company, and TECO Energy traveled to Capitol Hill to meet with federal lawmakers and their staff for the third annual Congressional Hurricane Preparedness and Recovery Symposium.

The symposium showcased the vital role of industry-government partnerships and mutual assistance networks. The event also emphasized the electric power industry's commitment to disaster preparedness and recovery, highlighting how technological advancements enable faster, more efficient responses as lineworkers and first responders restore power and hope to impacted communities.

During the event, electric companies showcased their disaster preparedness and resilience plans and tools, including:

• Dominion Energy’s grid upgrades that are enhancing resilience, including automatic sectionalizers that help restore power more quickly when outages occur.
• Duke Energy’s grid modernization plans, including investments in weather-resilient power poles, smart grid technologies, and unmanned aerial systems and helicopters to monitor the grid.
• Entergy's Damage Assessment Collecting Tool, which streamlines the damage assessment process and allows field assessors to access online maps to relay the exact location of where repairs need to be made.
• TECO Energy’s lineworker equipment, which highlighted the difficult task lineworkers face every day as they maintain, repair, and upgrade critical energy infrastructure and restore power after extreme weather events.
• Florida Power & Light’s drones, which optimize grid assessment efforts and allow crews to gain visibility into hard-to-access sites.

Power of Partnerships

The event's fireside chat, which featured American Red Cross Vice President for Disaster Programs Jennifer Pipa and EEI Senior Vice President for Energy Security and Industry Operations Scott Aaronson showcased the vital role of partnerships and mutual assistance networks across sectors.

“Electric companies are critical to national security and critical to health and safety. We appreciate the support of our government partners, and our mantra is to be better today than we were yesterday—and better tomorrow than we are today,” said Aaronson.

“When things occur, what we do is look to the entire network [of regional American Red Cross organizations] and ask each one of them to put forward their volunteers, so that we can bring them together and then deploy them down to the disaster area. It's the exact same kind of mutual aid assistance model [as the electric power sector],” Pipa said.

U.S. Representatives Troy Carter (D-LA) and Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), co-chairs of the Congressional Disaster Preparedness and Recovery Caucus, emphasized the importance of disaster preparedness and partnerships that support recovery efforts.

“These storms, high winds, and high waters, they don’t know zip codes, socioeconomic status, or political affiliation,” Rep. Carter said. “They are equal opportunity havoc wreakers. We thank you all for your partnership, and we stand ready to support you.”

Disaster preparedness and recovery requires “absolute partnership,” said Rep. Moskowitz, noting that the Caucus supports the electric power industry and emergency management officials.

To learn more about how EEI’s member companies respond to extreme weather events and other disasters, visit EEI’s website.

Since 1922, the Edison Award has recognized electric companies for their distinguished leadership, innovation, and contribution to the advancement of the electric industry for the benefit of all. The Edison Award is the most prestigious honor.

In March, an independent panel of reviewers met to evaluate nominations for the 2025 Edison Award and selected projects from The AES Corporation, Duke Energy, Edison International and Southern California Edison (SCE), and Southern Company as domestic finalists. Projects from ATCO Electric and Fortis Inc. were selected as international finalists.

“EEI’s member electric companies continue to drive innovation across their companies by investing in and deploying cutting-edge technologies and solutions that benefit the customers and communities they serve,” said EEI interim President and CEO Pat Vincent-Collawn. “This year’s Edison Award finalists have demonstrated exceptional leadership and ingenuity, and this recognition is well-deserved.”

The winners of the 97th Edison Award will be selected by a panel of former electric company chief executives and will be announced during EEI 2025, EEI’s annual conference and thought leadership forum, to be held June 2-4 in New Orleans.

Learn more about the Edison Award at eei.org/awards.

Domestic Finalists

The AES Corporation

• Maximo, the AI-Powered Robot

The AES Corporation unveiled Maximo, a first-of-its-kind robot powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and built to install solar panels quickly, precisely, and efficiently, in 2024. The robot works alongside construction crews to automate heavy lifting and precise placement tasks associated with installing solar panels, ultimately making the installation process safer and reducing costs.

Maximo is on track to install more than 100 megawatts of solar panels in 2025 and is slated to be deployed across 5 gigawatts (GW) of projects during the next three years, including the 2 GW Bellefield solar project in Kern County, Cali. That project, under contract with Amazon, is the largest solar-plus-storage project to be permitted in the United States to date.

Using advanced sensors and cameras, an industrial robotic arm, and generative AI to refine exact coordinates and dimensions for placement, Maximo can install solar panels in half the time and at half the cost of traditional crews while also opening the door for new career opportunities. Already, AES crew members have continued to work onsite alongside Maximo when they otherwise would have been sidelined from installation due to unpredictable weather conditions or staff shortages.

Duke Energy

• Setting a New Bar for Climate Resilience and Storm Response

In 2024, Duke Energy advanced its science-based planning to enhance grid resilience and reliability in the face of extreme weather. The company published the first comprehensive assessment of climate risks across generation, transmission, and distribution for a vertically integrated electric company: the Duke Energy Climate Resilience and Adaptation Study. 

Hurricanes Debby, Helene, and Milton impacted customers in all six states served by Duke Energy, leaving catastrophic damage in their wake and demanding a historic coordinated response from across the electric power industry. Duke Energy mobilized more than 20,000 workers in response to Helene and nearly 19,000 following Milton, and Duke Energy Foundation provided more than $2.3 million in grants to 78 organizations for disaster relief and recovery.

Resilience and restoration efforts were aided by the $4 billion Duke Energy invested last year in hardening and modernizing the grid, which included undergrounding lines, upgrading poles to steel and concrete in coastal areas, and installing innovative self-healing grid technology. These investments helped to avoid nearly 550,000 customer outages and saved 7 million hours of total outage time during Debby, Helene, and Milton.

These real-world challenges tested and validated the importance of Duke Energy’s commitment to resilience and system adaptation, solidifying the need for the industry to continue collaborating to further prepare for extreme weather events. Duke Energy is investing $70 billion during the next decade to make the grid smarter, stronger, and more resilient. The resilience and adaptation study also identified future opportunities, like new infrastructure design standards, to accommodate higher temperatures and mitigate impacts from flooding.

Edison International and Southern California Edison (SCE)

• AWARE System

SCE’s Advanced Waveform Anomaly Recognition (AWARE) system supplements advanced sensors and other applications already used by many electric companies with state-of-the-art physics-based AI models and machine learning technologies. The resulting grid anomaly detection and proactive fault management technology can help to identify and locate problematic equipment on SCE’s circuits before a failure occurs, mitigating outages and helping to keep customers and communities safe and energized.

Many smart grid technologies use electric waveforms to detect faults, but the energy grid’s increasing complexity and the rise of customer-sited distributed energy resources can add noise that is difficult for traditional detection programs to sift through.

SCE’s AWARE system uses AI and machine learning to identify the unique waveforms for different kinds of equipment failures. It also can help to pinpoint where failures take place within SCE’s service territory, accelerating restoration times and supporting safer and more targeted restoration efforts.

Southern Company

• Plant Vogtle Unit 4

Plant Vogtle Unit 4 entered commercial operation in April 2024, following the completion of Vogtle Unit 3 the year prior. Each unit can power 500,000 Georgia homes and businesses and will serve communities across the state for decades to come. Collectively, the units have created 800 new good-paying, high-quality permanent jobs while helping to strengthen America’s nuclear energy supply chain and talent pipeline.

Sitting on 3,000 acres of land on the banks of the Savannah River, Plant Vogtle is the largest generator of carbon-free nuclear energy in the United States, capable of producing more than 30 million megawatt-hours of electricity annually.

The nuclear energy produced by Vogtle Units 3 and 4 will prevent an estimated 10 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually, equivalent to planting 165 million trees every year, all while powering Georgia’s economy.

International Finalists

ATCO Electric

• Jasper National Park Wildfire Response

The 2024 wildfire in Jasper National Park was one of the most devastating in Canadian history, destroying nearly a third of the town of Jasper and forcing 25,000 residents to evacuate. Despite extensive damage to more than 800 electric and natural gas assets, ATCO Electric restored power to all properties able to receive it within 16 days of the fire’s outbreak—preventing economic losses while supporting community livelihoods.

The Jasper fire was first reported on July 22, 2024, and spread quickly and aggressively. ATCO Electric employees were among the last to evacuate and first to return as they worked to restore power to impacted communities. Through ATCO Electric’s extensive experience with wildfires in Alberta, the company effectively collaborated with Parks Canada and the Municipality of Jasper to rebuild infrastructure safely and as quickly as possible.

Grid hardening was critical to ATCO Electric’s response and restoration efforts. ATCO Electric undergrounded nearly 8 kilometers (5 miles) of distribution lines near a popular ski hill, replaced cables and converted lines associated with a local sky tram, and installed non-combustible composite poles to protect against future fire risk—highlighting the company’s commitment to supporting the area’s key economic driver and source of jobs.

Fortis Inc.

• Wataynikaneyap Power Transmission System

The approximately $1.9-billion Wataynikaneyap Power Transmission System is Canada’s largest Indigenous-led electricity project. Fortis partnered with Wataynikaneyap Power and 24 First Nations communities to construct the 1,800-kilometer (1,118-mile) transmission line connected to 22 substations. The system connects 17 rural and remote First Nations communities to the Ontario provincial energy grid.

Construction of the system began in 2020 and was completed in May 2024. With 16 of the 22 substations and half of the transmission line accessible only during winter months, construction timelines needed to be compressed, meaning, in some cases, a year’s worth of work needed to be completed in a matter of months.

The new transmission system is expected to reduce carbon emissions by 6.6 million tonnes during the next 40 years and will reduce First Nations communities’ reliance on diesel generation. Construction on new homes, offices, health facilities, fitness centers, and schools has already begun in areas that previously were unable to expand due to lack of access to reliable, affordable energy—underscoring the industry’s critical work to drive communities forward.

Left to right: Chris Harris, International Representative, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers; Eliecer Viamontes, President and CEO, Entergy Texas; Harry Sideris, President and CEO, Duke Energy; Michele O'Connell, President and CEO, Orange & Rockland Utilities; EEI Chair Maria Pope, President and CEO, Portland General Electric; and Chris Womack, President and CEO, Southern Company.

In late February, leaders from EEI and America’s investor-owned electric companies joined state regulators, technology leaders, government officials, consumer advocates, and other industry and regulatory stakeholders at the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners’ (NARUC’s) annual Winter Policy Summit in Washington, D.C.

“The purpose of this meeting is to assemble a group of key stakeholders to discuss the opportunities and challenges before us and how we can meet the demand that we are seeing in the electric power sector,” NARUC President and Georgia Public Service Commissioner Tricia Pridemore said during the summit’s opening session.

Throughout the four days of programming, more than 2,100 summit attendees heard about the considerable energy demand being generated by data centers and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies; physical, cyber, and weather-related threats to America’s critical energy infrastructure; and how electric companies are working with the regulatory community to power Americans’ lives and businesses and to keep customer costs as low as possible.

“NARUC was borne out of a noble idea, that the regulatory policies that were taking shape in Washington, D.C., couldn’t effectuate policy over such a large country,” said NARUC Executive Director Tony Clark. “What happens here directly affects affordability and the reliability of our system.”

Diverse Stakeholder Group Joins Demand Roundtable

New to the NARUC agenda this year was a Demand Roundtable discussion. The session convened more than 20 state commissioners, electric company executives, and technology leaders from Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Walmart to discuss demand needs and to ensure industry and regulators are moving in lockstep to bring new technologies, generation, and transmission and distribution to the energy grid.

“We need speed, flexibility, and a willingness to be creative to find solutions for our customers,” Exelon Corporation Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Michael Innocenzo said during the discussion, noting the industry’s dual priorities of meeting new customer demand while prioritizing service for existing customers and communities. “We have an obligation to maintain a grid that is safe, reliable, and affordable. We do not want to overburden any segment of our customers.”

To open the session, participants were polled on a series of questions to gauge their near- and long-term concerns about meeting demand growth. Nearly 1 in 3 representatives from electric companies and state commissions said they were very concerned about increasing demand from data centers, while 54 percent said they were somewhat concerned. Nearly 1 in 4 said significant upgrades are needed to existing infrastructure in their service territories to support projected growth.

Participants also were asked to list the biggest challenges that they see related to data center demand, and several common answers emerged: timelines involved with building new infrastructure, supply chain concerns, tariffs and cost allocation, and risks associated with first-of-a-kind technologies.

“There is substantial first-mover risk. Some of the investments we’re talking about are larger than entire companies,” said Duke Energy Senior Vice President for Pricing and Customer Solutions Lon Huber. “You can’t bet your company on these sorts of technologies. You can’t bet your service territory. There has to be some kind of partnership to support these technologies and ensure that electric companies aren’t solely bearing the risk.”

Unity of Effort and Message in Mutual Assistance

The first full day of the summit began with a discussion about mutual assistance and the power of partnership, moderated by Southern Company Chairman, President, and CEO Chris Womack and featuring International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers International Representative Chris Harris; Orange and Rockland President and CEO Michele O’Connell; EEI Chair Maria Pope, president and CEO of Portland General Electric (PGE); Duke Energy President Harry Sideris; and Entergy Texas Chair, President, and CEO Eliecer Viamontes.

“It is so important that we are starting this meeting with a discussion about mutual assistance,” said Womack. “This clearly demonstrates the role of what we do, the value of what we do, and it speaks to the value that we bring to customers and communities.”

Sideris and Viamontes discussed an active 2024 hurricane season, which included Hurricane Beryl’s impacts on Texas and Hurricanes Helene’s and Milton’s devastation to the Southeast. Sideris, whose hometown of Asheville, N.C., saw catastrophic damage from Helene, noted the storms impacted Duke Energy’s service territories across all six states that the company serves. He said the storm “caused the most damage that we’ve ever seen,” and he praised the army of mutual assistance workers who deployed to North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida to assist with storm response and recovery.

“There was a tremendous response from the industry, and it’s really in the DNA of our lineworkers and our companies. We had employees who lost homes and family members and came to work the next day to restore power,” Sideris said.

Viamontes stressed the importance of proactive communication with local officials and customers during storm response efforts, noting that Entergy Texas actively engaged with local media and held daily calls with elected officials during Beryl.

O’Connell was one of several on the panel who urged the regulatory community to support efforts to harden the grid and to make it more weather resilient, citing Orange and Rockland’s investments totaling $1 billion during the past 10 years in undergrounding overhead lines and installing submersible equipment.

Pope emphasized that wildfire mutual assistance is in many ways different from traditional storm response efforts but that some principles touted by other panelists still apply. She highlighted the use of early detection AI cameras and the increasing use of public safety power shutoffs in the West as efforts that potentially can mitigate catastrophic wildfires, as well as the need to engage with local officials to promote transparency.

“I never thought I’d know the chiefs of police in as many of our jurisdictions as I do today,” Pope said. “Unity of effort and unity of message are a hallmark of what we do in this industry. Mutual assistance demands leadership and coming together, not pointing fingers.”

‘Power Shifting to the States’

EEI Executive Vice President for Regulatory Affairs and International Programs Phil Moeller spoke during a series of events that EEI hosted on the sidelines of the summit, including at the EEI Women’s Breakfast. Moeller delivered remarks before and after a panel discussion about the industry’s commitment to reducing serious injuries and fatalities, moderated by Con Edison Vice President of Environment, Health, and Safety Venetia Lannon. The panel featured International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Fourth District International Vice President Gina Cooper, American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations President Liz Shuler, Minnesota Public Utilities Commission Chair Katie Sieben, and Pepco Holdings Chief Operating Officer Tamla Olivier.

The session featured panelists’ insights on recent trends, strategies to minimize incidents, the introduction of innovative safety metrics, and how a collaborative safety culture can support these efforts. The group discussed how to get at the heart of what causes incidents, how to implement effective reporting structures, and the importance of ongoing workforce training initiatives that help ensure safety.

“Zero incidents for our employees and our contractors, and zero public safety events: That’s always our goal,” Olivier said during the discussion.

Moeller also joined a NARUC Committee on Energy Resources and the Environment session, offering his federal policy predictions for 2025 and beyond.

He saw “an interesting dynamic of power shifting to the states, which we’re seeing through the actions of the Administration and the actions of Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Chairman Mark Christie.” That power shift, Moeller said, would require states within the same regions to work together more closely to avoid creating patchwork regulatory frameworks.

“That takes time. That takes trust. Putting the effort in to bridge regional differences will be important,” he said.

Moeller also stressed the need for more dynamic rate structures that send better price signals to customers, the importance of customer education and engagement, and the progress that the industry has made on workforce development and skills training initiatives.

“That issue really used to worry me when I served on FERC. I’m more comfortable now that there’s a lot more going on,” he said, highlighting EEI’s work with groups like Veterans in Energy and the Center for Energy Workforce Development.

Left to right: Mark Birk, Chairman and President, Ameren Missouri; EEI Vice Chair Calvin Butler, President and CEO, Exelon Corporation; Steve Fleishman, Managing Director and Senior Analyst, Wolfe Research; Michael Haggarty, Associate Managing Director, Moody's Ratings; Teresa Ho Kim, Managing Director, J.P. Morgan Asset Management; NARUC President Tricia Pridemore, Commissioner, Georgia Public Service Commission.

‘It’s Not Just About Demand Growth’

Several EEI member company CEOs joined NARUC sessions later in the week, including NiSource President and CEO Lloyd Yates, who participated in a fireside chat with Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission Chairman Stephen DeFrank. Yates discussed the industry’s emphasis on an all-of-the-above energy strategy and his optimism for hydrogen blending, small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs), and other emerging energy solutions.

“This is a huge economic development opportunity for this country. It’s a huge national security issue for this country,” Yates said. “We have to continue to put resources into nuclear and making SMRs work. We have to blend in renewables. Transmission investments are so important. And, we need more natural gas infrastructure. The energy transition looks different in every state, so you need to do the work and bring everyone to the table in every state.”

Later in the week, Ameren Missouri Chairman and President Mark Birk and EEI Vice Chair Calvin Butler, president and CEO of the Exelon Corporation, participated in a conversation about industry access to capital, joining Wolfe Research Senior Analyst Steve Fleishman, Moody’s Ratings Associate Managing Director Michael Haggarty, and J.P. Morgan Asset Management Managing Director Teresa Ho Kim.

Birk highlighted the need for proactive communication with regulators and members of the financial community, noting that Ameren Missouri regularly hosts power plant and facility tours to help stakeholders understand the size and scale of investments needed.

“If you’re able to show that the projects you’re working on directly benefit customers, and you can show the why, it makes it easier to work with regulators and with investors,” he said.

Butler noted that the electric power industry is the most capital-intensive in the country, with grid infrastructure investments totaling tens of billions of dollars each year. He said telling that story can be difficult sometimes because “we’re investing in things we hope you will never feel, like security.”

“It’s not just about demand growth. It’s about providing a system that everyone in this room can come to depend on. We all need to keep our eyes on the ball and stay on top of that,” Butler said.

Steve Young (SY): I was at Duke for 44 years. As I look back on that, I'll just mention a couple of things that stand out to me. At the very beginning of my career, in the early- to mid-1980s, I participated in rate reviews that included nuclear plants. This was a huge effort, as these facilities were new at the time, and getting them built, getting them in service and operating, and working their costs into rate reviews was a significant undertaking. To be part of that was such a rewarding chapter in my career.

The second thing I’ll mention has played out during the past 10 years or so, and that is getting our portfolio to where it is today. At Duke Energy, we had three mergers and acquisitions involving Cinergy in 2006, Progress Energy in 2012, and Piedmont Natural Gas in 2016. I was actively involved in all three of those, and we also divested certain parts of the company, including our merchant generation and international businesses.

To be on the ground meeting new people, discovering new avenues of business, and exploring new ways of doing things was exciting. These moves have helped build Duke Energy into what it is today.

Steve Young joined colleagues from Duke Energy in ringing the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange.

EP: What are the most important shifts in public policy affecting our industry that you have seen in your career?

SY: When I think about big policy changes in our industry, two developments come to mind. From the mid-1990s through the early 2000s, there was a strong push for deregulation of electric generation. Several laws were passed at the federal and state levels, and a lot of regulatory discussions came from that. You saw generation assets divested to non-regulated entities. That was a huge policy change at the midpoint of my career.

What was learned from that effort is that this business of generating electricity and getting it to customers in a safe, reliable manner is incredibly complex.

The second big policy change that I have seen has been more recent: the movement toward clean energy infrastructure. The desire to move away from carbon-producing generation assets, particularly coal, makes a lot of sense. I think the industry is being very wise about making this transition in a rational way, keeping in mind reliability and customer impact. The pace of the clean energy transition has made sense.

EP: How have you seen Duke Energy’s efforts to deliver benefits to customers evolve, given the technological advancements and policy shifts that took place throughout your career?

SY: When I first started, the industry’s general strategy was to work as effectively and efficiently as possible, and those efforts would take care of customers in and of themselves. We didn’t know a lot about our customers, and we even used to call them “ratepayers.” We didn’t have many mechanisms to get more information, and there wasn’t a lot of communication between us.

The most influential development as it relates to customers has been the rapid development of communication technology. It’s astounding. When we anticipate a storm coming, we can send texts to customers. We can tell them when we think a storm might hit, when an outage might occur, who to call, and what to do. We can share outage maps that tell customers we’re aware of outages, we have crews on the way, and we have an anticipated time of restoration.

And, there have been advances in other technologies like smart meters that allow customers to be more involved. They can now remotely monitor and control energy consumption in their homes and businesses. This has all dramatically changed the way we interface with customers, and you have to be conscious of that. You have to be aggressive about getting resources and information in places in a way that can take advantage of these technologies for customers.

“The most influential development as it relates to customers has been the rapid development of communication technology.”

EP: Under your leadership, Duke Energy developed a new Sustainable Financing Framework. This has paved the way for the company to issue green and sustainable bonds, loans, and other financing mechanisms, which have helped drive investments in clean energy technologies and create opportunities for small and diverse businesses. What can you say about the framework and the difference that it has made at Duke Energy?

SY: I am proud of what we've done at Duke Energy in terms of trying to think about different ways to raise capital. We are a capital-intensive industry. At Duke Energy, we’re raising more than $10 billion each year to build critical energy infrastructure. When you’re building at this scale, you sometimes need to be creative about who you’re reaching out to.

We have embraced the idea of developing green bonds, where the proceeds are utilized specifically for renewable energy resources. That grabs an investor bloc that may not have been looking at our sector solely because they’re focused on renewables. We’ve also looked at financing mechanisms around diversity and inclusion initiatives, where we’re able to show how funds that we receive are benefiting small businesses and minority-owned businesses. That’s another pocket of investors that we can reach.

This work is so important for so many different communities. We’re trying to make sure more targeted groups of investors understand that the funds they invest with us will result in the types of investments that they care about most.

EP: How have you helped foster constructive relationships with regulators and other stakeholders during your career?

SY: For Duke Energy, what we've accomplished in the past several years is a great example of really constructive regulation.

In North Carolina, for example, we’ve seen bipartisan legislation that incentivizes us to work toward cleaner energy production and the retirement of coal facilities—but replacing those coal facilities in a manner that doesn’t sacrifice reliability and keeps in mind customer rate impacts. To get that done, you really need to work with stakeholders, legislators, commissioners, customers, and local officials across your service area to understand the challenges, risks, and benefits. Constructive regulation starts with the education of stakeholders.

And, I am encouraged that most stakeholders really understand the value of electricity and that our economy depends on digital capability, which requires electricity and the production and distribution of safe, reliable, 24/7 energy. That’s not taken for granted as much as it was when I first started in the industry.

EP: You guided the formation of the Business Transformation and Technology unit at Duke Energy, which launched in 2016 to manage the company’s information, technology, and security efforts. What is your perspective on the cyber and physical security threats that our industry faces today?

SY: It's amazing what technological changes have brought to our industry and our economy. Communication technologies, smart meters, and customers’ ability to better understand their energy consumption are all terrific. But, with them comes the risk that bad actors will try to interfere.

The first thing that I did when this area of the company was put under my leadership was take cyber and physical security operations outside of the purview of the traditional information technology department.

Security deserves a much higher profile within any organization. We then went about getting the talent and the people we needed to understand this space and the role that we play in it. We worked with universities, technical schools, and the military on recruitment.

When it comes to security, you need to get the right people, but you also need the right technologies: the firewalls and the tools that allow us to see who is trying to infiltrate our systems and ping our websites. And, despite everything that you may do to prevent incidents, you need to have an action plan in place. You need to think about the communication that you’d need to engage in within the company, with regulators and legislators, and with local officials and law enforcement. You need drills and trainings to ensure readiness if an event ever was to occur.

There is tremendous benefit to all of this technology. We are harnessing it as safely and as best we can, and we are allocating resources to mitigate risk and ensure that we can continue the safe and reliable delivery of electricity.

Physical security is an interesting issue. We always have had intense physical security around nuclear facilities. But, we've had to significantly advance the physical security around other facilities. We are seeing an increase in the number of people trying to damage our facilities, such as transmission substations.

We have amped up security around these facilities, using cameras and other technologies. We also have significantly increased our communication with local law enforcement.

Many of these facilities are in rural or sparsely populated areas, and we are working to ensure a greater presence of law enforcement to keep an eye on things. That’s a relatively new national phenomenon that has come about during the past five to 10 years.

“When it comes to security, you need to get the right people, but you also need the right technologies.”

EP: You joined Duke Energy out of college and rose through the ranks, building an impressive career at the company. Given your background, what perspective can you offer on how our industry can attract, retain, and develop the careers of promising young professionals?

SY: Duke Energy always was a fabulous place to work in my mind. Our industry provides an unquestionably valuable service. We are producing energy, natural gas, and electricity that folks depend on. I like that.

Duke Energy also did a great job of providing different types of opportunities throughout my career. I came in as a staff accountant, and I was quickly tapped to work on rate reviews. That’s not normal accounting work, but I was able to start learning that facet of the business.

I ultimately became the head of the regulatory affairs and rates department, which would not have happened without someone giving me that early opportunity.

Later, I helped with merger integration. That was incredibly valuable to me, as well, and it also was a departure from traditional financial and accounting work. You had to work for your opportunities, but I saw throughout my career that Duke Energy was willing to provide them.

The other aspect of the company and the industry that I enjoyed was the atmosphere of teamwork. A lot of young employees ask me for words of advice, and I always say, “Be a good teammate.” I’ve never done anything alone. You need to coordinate with operating staff, engineers, attorneys, the regulatory teams, the financial teams, the communications teams, and so many other stakeholders. It takes a lot of teamwork to operate these facilities and also invest in our system to serve customers for the future. There is a lot of dynamic interplay, which I enjoyed.

EP: Thomas Edison once said, “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed always is to try one more time.” How has this idea of perseverance, even in the face of adversity, factored into your career?

SY: If you work this long at a company, there has to be some level of perseverance. I believe Duke Energy Chair and CEO Lynn Good has done a great job of fostering a culture of perseverance. Opportunities aren’t going to fall into your lap. You need to put the work in.

A good example of that is the legislation and regulatory decisions that we have seen during the past 10 years. You can’t just walk into a state capital and say, “This would be a good energy policy for customers. Let’s pass it tomorrow.” It takes years of work, conducting the right education efforts with the right stakeholders. You’ll have bumps along the road, and it takes perseverance and bringing others along to make progress.

This industry is providing a service that is so fundamentally important. It is not a hit-or-miss business. We must do our jobs correctly every day, and Lynn Good has done an extraordinary job of fostering a culture that emphasizes preparing for bumps and keeping at it when we hit them.