The Grid Advancement Program takes the modernization problems every utility is facing and works them as a cohort, one challenge a month, on the second Tuesday at 2:00 p.m. ET. Each challenge opens with a brief and a briefing video, runs a working session, and closes with what the room actually learned. We start with the Wildfire-Resilient Grid on August 11, 2026. Sign up for the whole run or just the challenges you are living.
Each challenge below is a working problem, not a webinar. Before the session you get the Challenge Brief and a briefing video, so nobody spends the hour getting up to speed. In the session the utilities living that problem compare notes. Afterward, the Flight Plan and the cohort's retrospective land in InnovationWorks. Recruitment runs per challenge: bring your wildfire people in August and your forecasters in February.
Spots are limited. The cohort is open to AEIC members and to any electric utility that would like to engage with their peers.
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 rather than replacing it, and closing the gap between the workforce we have and the one the grid will need.
The Grid Advancement Program runs as a cohort of utilities working the same problems at the same time. It is open to AEIC members and to any electric utility. If you run a utility, you are welcome here.
See membership About the program