“The team has been responsible for scaling our DR portfolio, which has grown into a Virtual Power Plant. With almost 80,000 thermostats enrolled in Cool Rewards – a smart thermostat program for residential customers – we’re capable of shedding more than 110 MW of energy demand. That’s equivalent of a small power plant, or 15,000 homes.”

“We saw a need in the nuclear industry to reduce costs and improve safety. We’ve implemented a multitude of drones and robotics to replace people in hazardous environments, have eliminated that safety hazard, and the equipment is relatively low cost compared to the amount of savings. It’s been a win-win.”

“I support my team’s growth in the industry and champion the innovative use of asset monitoring equipment to improve the safety of our employees, the effectiveness of our equipment monitoring, and to ensure we’re supplying reliable service to our customers.”

“The team successfully connected six thousand solar systems to DERMs using our existing AMI Mesh network. We also successfully tested and approved two hundred inverters to be installed on our grid, using DERMs active management to reduce costs of interconnection by upward of six million dollars.”

“Our innovation improved defect detection, reduced manual labeling hours, and enabled us to create realistic images of rare defects where real-world data was scarce. It gave us a scalable methodology to apply this across various assets. This innovation paves the way for more drone deployments, reducing field hazards for crews, and accelerating defect resolution for better grid reliability.”

“That initial innovation was for an advanced analytics visualization platform. That has transitioned and been scaled to what we now have with our Wildfire Next Generation System, WiNGs.”

“This innovation is about a simulation in the metaverse, simulating cybersecurity events, and how we can react to them. We created three virtual meta worlds, an electrical substation, the emergency communications center or ECC, and a cybersecurity collaboration meeting room.”

“We switched over to a digital platform for substation protection and control, compared to the hundreds or thousands of copper cables. Our new solution enables us to complete construction more efficiently. We can deploy this type of technology and construct a substation control house in a matter of months instead of years.”

An overview of this year’s top innovators from fourteen utilities, as well as some excellent nominations.

When asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, George Leigh Mallory famously said, “because it is there.” I thought of that inspiring line when wondering why this year’s Fortnightly Top Innovators wanted to innovate. Is it because the challenge, and the fruits of conquering it, were right there before them, beckoning them?