Southern Company

Hosted by Oak Ridge National Laboratory for the Department of Energy’s Thermal Energy Recovery & Management Center of Excellence, the workshop focuses on testing, validation, integration, and deployment of high-temperature heat pumps across technology readiness levels. Plenary topics include the U.S. industrial heat-pump landscape, market pathways, technology readiness, economics, deployment pathways, technology advances, R&D priorities, demonstrations, and deployment lessons. Breakout discussions cover OEM roadmaps and product readiness; working fluids, compressors, component supply chains, advanced heat exchangers, and system integration; end-user needs, controls, thermal storage, and grid flexibility; and standards, codes, testing, certification, financing, commercialization, and public-private partnerships. Report-outs and a facilitated discussion address priority needs, gaps, and recommended actions, followed by workshop synthesis on cross-cutting R&D, demonstration, deployment, and partnership priorities.

The program spans project execution, nuclear energy, and grids, AI, and infrastructure. Sessions address financing and delivering the U.S. energy buildout; grid capacity, interconnection, transmission, reliability, and cost allocation; and the effects of data-center and industrial demand on power planning. Nuclear topics include power for data centers, first-of-a-kind project cost and delivery, nuclear finance, HALEU and fuel supply, utility choices among large reactors, SMRs, and microreactors, and pathways to SMR deployment. Other sessions cover LNG security, trade, and investment; energy storage and grid-edge technologies; AI in energy operations; and project bankability, permitting, policy, supply-chain, and delivery risks. The program also includes executive roundtables, a project-execution clinic, and an energy startup pitch competition.

The program covers utility grid modernization, distribution planning, ADMS and DERMS deployment, distributed energy resource management, advanced metering, battery storage, microgrids, and data-center load growth. Sessions address grid reliability and resilience, wildfire risk, cybersecurity and OT security, AI applications in planning and operations, utility communications, affordability, workforce development, and policy and regulation. Named program items include “How Are Utility CEOs Driving the Age of Acceleration?”, “How Will the Data Center Boom Define the Evolution of the Grid?”, and “US DOE Grid Modernization Investment Framework – An Effective Cost Justification for Building the Grid of the Future.”

The program focuses on clean-energy project performance, resource optimization, data tracking, and energy-assessment accuracy for solar, wind, and storage projects. Topics include solar design, module and system performance and degradation, modeling practices, soiling, capacity testing, and climate impacts; wind modeling, lidar and remote sensing, turbine and blade losses, equipment-failure prediction, IEC standards, FAA permitting, layout optimization, and repowering; and battery degradation, performance metrics, and pairing generation and storage with data-center loads. Additional topics include uncertainty modeling, AI applications, GIS and site planning, complex terrain and land cover, time-series data, co-located wind, solar, and battery storage modeling, climate impacts on energy assessments, renewable revenue and market outlooks, and storage revenue modeling. Proposal types include speaking and poster presentations, as well as sponsored software and tool review presentations or demos.