Engineering & Operations Conference

The summit brings together public power professionals, safety experts, and utility leaders for focused discussions and peer exchanges on utility safety. Themes include current safety resources, effective leadership and training, real-world safety challenges, proven strategies, emerging trends, and building a resilient work culture through collaboration. The intended audience includes safety and training professionals, directors, managers, vice presidents, superintendents, systems and network engineers, city managers, and emerging leaders.

Sessions cover Environmental, Generation & Fuels; Grid Modernization; Transmission & Distribution; and Reliability & Resilience. Conference attendees can also attend sessions in the concurrent Safety Summit. The conference focuses on practices for building and maintaining safe, reliable electric systems, and includes the Public Power NextTech Expo. The 2027 agenda has not been published.

WEI’s largest event includes general sessions with industry leaders and keynote speakers, plus breakout programming across Asset Management, Damage Prevention, Electric Distribution, Electric Substation, Electric Transmission, Grid of the Future, Grid Resilience, Low Carbon Fuels, Natural Gas Emergency Response + Restoration, Natural Gas Integrity Management, Natural Gas Operational Excellence, Operational Leadership, Safety + Health, Safety Management Systems, and Workforce Development. The program is open to anyone in the energy industry.

The conference brings together public power leaders, policymakers, vendors, and partners to exchange strategies and discover solutions for long-term utility success. Its program addresses how changing policy, technology, and lifestyles are reshaping the energy industry and communities, with multiple tracks and sessions. The Industry Innovations Expo focuses on solutions and tools for utility decision-makers, and the conference also includes a public-power community service component.

Public power utility leaders meet with experts in technology, energy, and policy. Attendance is limited to facilitate productive dialogue. Sessions address shifts in the global energy landscape, including the energy transition, energy security, geopolitical and economic competition, and investment in energy infrastructure, renewable technologies, nuclear power, and fossil fuels. Other discussions examine reliability and affordability amid growing demand, rising costs, regulatory pressures, and customer expectations; resource adequacy, infrastructure investment, workforce challenges, supply-chain constraints, and emerging technologies; and leadership through outages, cyber incidents, severe weather, safety emergencies, and public scrutiny. The program also explores AI and other emerging technologies, including their utility applications and questions around governance, cybersecurity, workforce impacts, and risk management. Additional topics include evaluating and integrating significant new loads, generation and infrastructure investments, contracts and rate protections, aligning economic development with the public power mission, and workforce development, succession planning, leadership training, and knowledge transfer.

The conference combines superintendent and engineer meetings for presentations on new technology, standards, and industry regulations, alongside a joint product show featuring solutions from digital tools to bucket trucks. Agenda topics include automation, leadership, field testing for metering accuracy and hidden losses, AI tools for engineering and operations, advanced distribution operations and faster restoration, and relay testing. A group-led roundtable covers artificial intelligence in electric cooperatives, contractor requirements, dispatching, employee retention, right-of-way and line-extension policies, pole loading and guying, BESS, data center loads, electronic breakers, safety, equipment, and automation. Additional listed issues include ODOT projects, ground-grid and relay advancements, vegetation and asset management using LiDAR and drone mapping, protection engineering, utility construction coordination and constructability, and independent construction oversight and QA/QC. The business meeting includes the election of 2027 officers and new business.

Annual conference and thought leadership forum with keynote discussions and breakouts focused on forces shaping the electric power industry. The intended audience includes electric company executives, government leaders, technology partners and innovators, policymakers, regulators, and industry stakeholders.

A business and education event for power generation professionals, including generator owner-operators, engineers, manufacturers, consultants, and service providers. Themes include operating and maintaining generation assets, new technologies, market shifts, operational challenges, managing costs, and bringing new capacity online.

Topics include electrical safety and high-risk work environments; serious-incident reviews and lessons learned; human performance and error reduction; contractor safety; confined-space, work-at-height, and rescue practices; and emergency response, thermal runaway, and fire preparedness for battery energy storage systems. Operations and asset-performance topics include predictive maintenance, reliability optimization, advanced analytics, major-component reliability for gearboxes, blades, inverters, and BESS, aging fleets, asset-life extension, hybrid wind, solar, and storage operations, and operational readiness and commissioning. Workforce themes include fatigue management, technician readiness, apprenticeships, cross-training, frontline leadership, knowledge transfer, and succession planning. The PowerCast Stage features practical presentations on operational experiences, demonstrations, emerging technologies, and best practices.

The program covers power-generation operations, grid reliability and security, project development, and changing electricity demand. Keynote sessions address supply, demand and the next build cycle; securing the grid amid AI-related threats; and reliability, readiness and the performance gap. Technical sessions include gas-turbine fleet performance and upgrade potential; advanced reactors and TRISO fuel; carbon-capture integration; battery storage and capacity-market accreditation; data-center power demand and flexibility; long-duration storage; nuclear digital modernization; renewable integration; and power-project delivery. Additional program areas include CHP, cybersecurity, grid planning, emissions, and operations and asset reliability.