NRECA Regions 8&10 Meeting

NRECA regional meetings bring cooperative leaders together to discuss regional priorities, emerging trends, innovative strategies, and energy policy. The meeting is part of NRECA’s annual member resolutions process: voting delegates elect representatives to NRECA Member Standing Committees and vote on proposed resolutions. The event page identifies electric co-op CEOs, directors, voting delegates, and key co-op staff as the intended audience, with regional resolutions committee and business meetings as part of the process.

NRECA Regional Meetings bring cooperative leaders together to discuss regional priorities, emerging trends, innovative strategies, and energy policy. The meeting contributes to NRECA’s member resolutions process: voting delegates elect representatives to member standing committees and vote on proposed resolutions. The event is open to NRECA members, including employees, directors, and consultants.

The regional meeting brings electric cooperative leaders together to discuss regional priorities, emerging trends, innovative strategies, and energy policy through NRECA’s member resolutions process. The meeting’s general format includes regional business and resolutions meetings, along with targeted pre-conference education. Regional meetings are open to NRECA members, including employees, directors, and consultants.

The gathering focuses on cooperative leadership and the changing energy landscape, including emerging technologies, rising demand, and shifting consumer expectations. Programming includes general sessions, education sessions on emerging issues, innovations, and strategies, an Expo featuring industry technologies and services, and the annual member business meeting. Voting members consider proposed resolutions and amendments to NRECA bylaws through the member resolutions process, which includes a Proposed Resolutions Forum.

PowerXchange is an annual meeting of cooperative leadership focused on emerging technologies, rising demand, shifting consumer expectations, and the changing energy landscape. The program includes general sessions with nationally renowned speakers, education sessions on emerging issues, innovations and strategies, peer collaboration, and an expo featuring technologies and services for electric cooperatives. The event also includes NRECA's Annual Business Meeting, where voting delegates participate in the member resolutions process and consider proposed resolutions and amendments to the NRECA Bylaws.

Sessions address electric cooperative governance, strategic planning, and emerging industry issues. A discussion covers challenges, opportunities, and successes for electric cooperatives; other sessions examine the U.S. economy, financial markets, and electric industry outlook and their effects on cooperatives. General-session themes include planning for goals, assessing risk, preparing for adversity, and the role of heroism and service. Breakouts cover questions directors should ask about data centers, preventing electrical accidents, communicating with consumer-members, and artificial intelligence and the future of energy. Electrical-safety demonstrations illustrate the risks of high-voltage electricity and the equipment and practices used to protect cooperative employees and the public. The closing session includes an update from NRECA’s board of directors.

NARUC’s capstone meeting includes a year-end summary from NARUC President Ann Rendahl, topics across utility sectors, and installation of the organization’s new president and officers. The program covers utility affordability, customer assistance, ratemaking, large-load growth, data centers, demand response, and flexible load; transmission capacity, advanced transmission technologies, permitting reform, and infrastructure investment; coal-plant options, nuclear energy, natural gas, and pipeline safety; and grid resilience, distributed energy resources, virtual power plants, battery storage, and community microgrids. Other sessions address AI-enabled extreme-weather preparedness, cybersecurity in water and wastewater systems, operational technology for gas and water leak detection, telecommunications network transitions, utility data and customer service infrastructure, water infrastructure investment, federal-state energy regulation, and regulatory impacts of proposed permitting legislation. A workshop examines methods for evaluating advanced transmission technologies, including dynamic line ratings, advanced power flow controls, and advanced conductors. The agenda also includes committee business meetings and general sessions on utility infrastructure resilience and community-based resilience investments. Some meetings are closed to nonmembers or restricted to invitees.

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.

Attendance is open to NEPOOL Participants and their authorized representatives; consumer advocates, federal and state officials, and guests cleared with the Committee Chair may attend, except as otherwise limited for executive sessions. Attendees must identify themselves and their affiliation. Official records and minutes are posted publicly, but statements made at NEPOOL meetings are not to be quoted or published publicly.