Ten grid modernization challenges. Ten months. Built by utilities, for utilities, so the cost of finding out lands once instead of two dozen times. The cohort convenes the second Tuesday of every month at 2:00 p.m. ET. Challenge 01 ran August 11; the next session is September 8. Join the whole run, or join the one challenge your team is living right now.
Today's grid is under extraordinary demand. The rise of AI data centers, electrification, and distributed energy resources is straining capacity, and prices have climbed since 2021. Utilities are expected to scale faster than ever. Grid modernization is no longer optional. It is an imperative.
That is where the Grid Advancement Program comes in. Run inside AEIC's Center for Operational Excellence and powered by InnovationForce, the cohort pools what it learns so the cost of solving each challenge lands once, not once per utility. The technology to modernize the grid largely exists. The hard part is balancing affordability with innovation, and doing it together.
The program works one challenge at a time, in order, one a month for ten months. Each challenge opens with a briefing and a problem brief, runs a working session with the utilities living that problem, and closes with a retrospective on what the cohort actually tried. Teams recruit per challenge, so a planner can come for load forecasting and a security lead can come for OT/IT convergence without either one sitting through the other.
This program is for the people inside our utilities who carry ideas into practice. At some companies that sits in research and development. At others it is innovation, or technology strategy, or continuous improvement, or operational excellence, or the transformation office, or a process owner who simply refuses to accept that this is how it has always been done.
You see a better way, and then you have to get it funded, owned, proven, and adopted inside an organization that is deliberately built to change slowly. That crossing is the craft, and it is what we are here to compare notes on.
If part of your job is taking a better way of doing something and getting it from an idea to something the business actually runs, this is your room. Whatever your utility calls that role.
If this is your space, come. And if the person who actually does this at your utility sits somewhere you would not expect, which is usually the case, send us their name.
Every challenge arrives with the same stack of work behind it, matched to the operating problems utilities are actually living.
Ten grid modernization challenges drawn from research of public utility filings, grouped by theme, and sharpened by the cohort that works them.
One per challenge, published here before the session: the operating problem, what is at stake, and what the cohort is being asked to solve.
A short walkthrough of the challenge and the technology landscape, so your team arrives on the same page instead of spending the session getting there.
The working document inside InnovationWorks: the pilot scaffold, the data-readiness checklist, and a labeled scan of the solution landscape.
Second Tuesday, 2:00 p.m. ET. Utility peers compare notes and move past endless pilots into real change. Not recorded, so the room can be candid.
What the cohort actually tried and what happened. The constraints hit, the tradeoffs made, what one Director would tell the next. No vendor can write this.
The cohort works the list in order, one challenge a month. The series opened August 11, 2026 and runs through May 2027. Recruitment runs per challenge, so your team can commit to the full series or to the single problem it is living right now. Sign up for the ones you want and we will send the brief, the video, and the session invite ahead of the date.
Hardening the grid against weather and wildfire risk: the sensing, the risk intelligence, and the field practices utilities are putting to work where the stakes are highest. The first challenge the cohort takes on together.
Keeping an aging asset base reliable under real capital constraints: where to invest, what to defer, and how risk-based planning changes the answer.
Relieving capacity constraints without always building new wires: grid-enhancing technologies and non-wires alternatives, and where each one actually fits.
Building resilience into utility supply chains: lead times, sourcing risk, and the planning it takes to keep the material flowing when the grid cannot wait.
Clearing the interconnection queue: the process, data, and coordination that move projects from application to energization faster.
Running the grid two ways at once: operationalizing distributed energy resources and inverter-based resources in real operations, not just on paper.
Sharpening the load forecast under a new demand curve: the methods, data, and assumptions the forecast now has to carry.
Engaging customers on a more dynamic grid: the programs, signals, and communication that bring customers into grid operations as partners.
Bridging operational and information technology: turning a data-rich, insight-poor field operation into one where the two sides actually talk.
Building the grid workforce of the future: amplifying field expertise, not replacing it, and closing the gap between the workforce we have and the one the grid will need.
All ten Challenge Briefs are published. Each one is the operating problem, what is at stake, and what the cohort is being asked to solve. No vendors, no product recommendations. Read the one your team is fighting right now.
Each challenge is introduced and worked on camera before the session: a short briefing on the problem, and a walkthrough of the Flight Plan you will work in. The working hour itself is not recorded, so the room can be candid. Program highlights live on AEIC's channel.
Walkthroughs of each challenge, the technology landscape, and live cohort working sessions are published to the workspace as the program runs. Sign in to watch the full library.
Member Portal AEIC on YouTubeAEIC's bi-weekly podcast carries the same operating story to a wider audience: practical conversations on grid modernization with the utility leaders living it.
Grid Mod Pod Listen on SpotifyInnovationForce democratizes innovation with an AI-powered platform that fosters collaboration and accelerates time-to-decision. AEIC hosts the Grid Advancement Program on InnovationWorks, InnovationForce's secure collaboration space, purpose-built for the energy industry.
Backed by InnovationForce co-founder Dr. Linda A. Hill of Harvard Business School, InnovationWorks helps utility teams escape pilot purgatory and move from challenge to scaled solution faster. The partnership pairs InnovationForce's platform, led by CEO and founder Kim Getgen, with AEIC's convening power across the industry's most senior operators.
The cross-cutting operational arm the program runs inside.
The shared data foundation grid modernization decisions rest on.
The forecasting work behind Challenge 07, run as its own cohort.
Challenge 01 is wildfire, and it is first because it is the one where the cost of being wrong is unbounded. The March pilot surfaced the problem we keep hearing: nearly everyone had better risk data than their operators could act on. The plan was annual and four hundred pages. The decision was made in an eight hour shift by someone who could not open it. That gap is where ignitions happen.
Come for the full ten months, or come for the one problem your team is fighting right now. The program is open to AEIC members and to any electric utility. If you run a utility, you are welcome here, member or not.
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