Top Innovators 2023
Alice Jackson is Chief Planning Officer at Xcel Energy. Dan Killoren is Innovation Hub Manager at EPRI. Kevin Woodbury is VP Innovation & Technology at Fortis.
Innovators and superstars of the energy and utilities industry attended the Fortnightly Top Innovators 2023 conference at the historic Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. to learn, trade ideas, and network. This session, Innovation and Customer Affordability, featured Xcel Energy Chief Planning Officer Alice Jackson, EPRI Innovation Hub Manager Dan Killoren, and Fortis VP Innovation & Technology Kevin Woodbury.
Dan Killoren: Alice, you look at and assess technologies, what are the types of technologies you think would have a meaningful impact in the three-to-five-year time horizon?
Alice Jackson: What has come to the forefront, especially with the Inflation Reduction Act being passed, is the economics associated with battery storage. That change is in the forefront with activities ongoing in Colorado inside of Xcel Energy's portfolio, and that's exemplified in the electric resource plan we just presented to the commission in September.
The timing was good because we were in the process of making a request for proposals for technologies and energy resources needed when the IRA came out. It ended up significantly shifting what we expected to be acquiring in that jurisdiction from a battery storage perspective.