Thursday, January 22

7.30-8.30am – Breakfast
 

8.30-9.00am – Welcome and Opening Remarks
Kicking off PRF with an overview of our coverage of the space, key themes in the market and the plan for the conference

Julia Hamm: Partner, The Ad Hoc Group & PRF Host

Stephen Lacey: Executive Editor & Co-Founder, Latitude Media & PRF Host

Jason Ryan: EVP, Regulatory Services & Government Affairs, CenterPoint Energy & PRF Advisory Board Co-Chair

Morgan Scott: VP, Global Outreach & Partnerships, EPRI & PRF Advisory Board Co-Chair

9.00-9.30am - Opening Keynote: From Stability to Surprise: How Shifting Weather Patterns Are Rewriting the Rules for Grid Resilience 
Traditional weather patterns are shifting in ways that defy historical norms. Once-reliable seasonal cues are becoming erratic, extremes are becoming more common, and the past is no longer a trustworthy guide for future grid planning. As the boundaries between short-term weather and long-term climate trends blur along the weather-climate continuum, the power sector needs to rethink decision making in an increasingly uncertain climate. This keynote will explore why and how grid planners and operators must adapt to this new reality.

Sunny Wescott: Chief Meteorologist, Federal Government

9.30-10.10am - Building the Nation’s Most Resilient Coastal Grid: Strategies from Texas Utilities on Hurricanes, Floods, and Superstorms
Texas utilities are on the front lines of extreme weather, from hurricanes to "100-year" floods that strike every few years. In 2024, both CenterPoint and Entergy filed ambitious resilience plans with their regulator to harden the grid, cut storm outages, and protect millions of customers across Greater Houston and Southeast Texas. How did these utilities embed resilience into long-term planning? How are their customers and regulator evaluating resilience technologies and their ROI? How are CenterPoint and Entergy collaborating with key stakeholders and each other to make the entire community more resilient?

Chairman Thomas Gleeson: Chairman, Public Utility Commission of Texas 

Julie Caruthers Parsley: CEO, Pedernales Electric Cooperative

Eliecer Viamontes: President & CEO, Entergy Texas

Jason Wells: President & CEO, CenterPoint Energy

Judge Edward Emmett: Former Judge, Harris County; Fellow, Baker Institute, Rice University (Moderator)

10.10-10.30am - Designing for the Storm: Florida Power & Light’s Grid Resilience Playbook

Florida Power & Light has spent more than a decade shifting from “prepare and restore” to “predict and prevent.” In one of the most hurricane-exposed regions in the country, FPL has embedded resilience into capital planning, system design, and field operations — and the results are showing up in reliability gains and avoided outage costs. This session examines what’s worked: large-scale undergrounding, hardened transmission structures, automated switching, and advanced fault detection and analytics — and the organizational and regulatory alignment that enabled it.

Manny Miranda: President, Next Level Energy; Retired EVP, Power Delivery, Florida Power & Light Company

Miranda Ballentine: Former Assistant Secretary, Airforce (Installations, Environment, and Energy); Senior Advisor, The Ad Hoc Group (Moderator)

10.30-11:00am - Networking Break

11.00-11.30am - Built to Solve: Strengthening Reliability Under Pressure

When extreme weather strikes, rapid response is only the beginning. Across North America, utilities and their partners are rethinking how restoration can double as resilience — turning emergency mobilizations into opportunities to rebuild stronger systems. With the largest craft-skilled workforce and private fleet in the industry, Quanta is helping utilities move from recovery to readiness. In this session, Quanta and its utility partners share how a construction-led approach is delivering safer, faster, and more resilient outcomes.

Kamran Ali: SVP, Transmission Grid Planning & Engineering, AEP

Michelle Vargo: SVP, Energy Operations, Puget Sound Energy

Earl C. "Duke" Austin, Jr.: President & CEO, Quanta Services (Moderator)

11.30-11:50pm - Utility Leaders Pitch Their Toughest Technology Gaps
Extreme weather is testing the grid like never before. In this fast-paced session, three utility executives will each have five minutes to pitch their most urgent resilience challenge. From storm response to wildfire risk to grid hardening, they'll spotlight the gaps where innovation is needed most.

Andy Abranches: VP, Wildfire Mitigation, PG&E

Linda Ferrone: Chief Customer & Marketing Officer, Orlando Utilities Commission

Lidija Sekaric: VP, Innovation & Emerging Technology, NRECA (Moderator)

11.50am-12.30pm - Someone Else’s Problem. Until It Isn’t. Do All Utilities Need Wildfire Mitigation Plans?
Hawaii is green and lush. And surrounded by water. So why should utilities and regulators in the state have been planning for potential wildfires? What about utilities in the East, utilities that are primarily urban, utilities with service territories that are grasslands rather than forests? What’s at stake if you have a low likelihood but high consequence wildfire? What actions should utilities and regulators in states with low wildfire risk be taking, and why?

John Colella: Managing Director & Head of U.S. Power & Utilities, Moelis & Company

Robert Kenney: President, Xcel Energy - Colorado

Ann Rendahl: Commissioner, Washington Utilities & Transportation Commission

Bryan Spear: CEO, Technosylva

Michael Wara: Senior Director, Policy, Sustainability Accelerator, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability

12.30-1.30pm - Lunch

1.30-2.30pm - Open Circuit Live

2.30-3.05pm - Forecasting the Future: Weather Modeling for a Resilient Grid

Storms don’t wait — and neither should the grid. This session dives into cutting-edge weather modeling that helps utilities predict risks, prevent outages, and keep power flowing when extreme weather hits.

Don Daigler: SVP, Emergency Preparedness & Response, CenterPoint Energy

Matt Stein: Co-Founder & CEO, Salient Predictions

Maeve Allsup: Reporter, Latitude Media (Moderator)

2.30-3.05pm - Outage-Proof: Measuring the True Value of Grid Resilience

As extreme weather events intensify utilities are investing more in grid resilience measures to prevent, withstand, and recover from disruptions. This session explores how utilities and regulators can assess individual investments in the context of affordability, ensuring they align with system risk, balance other priorities, and account for lifecycle costs. Is there a common framework we can develop to quantify the benefits of resilience projects—such as avoided outages, faster restoration, and reduced customer harm—and how can planning tools help target high-risk areas and guide strategic grid hardening decisions?

Sandeep Aujla: Director, Fire Science & Climate Adaptation, San Diego Gas & Electric

Dan Nuñez: Senior Director, Wildfire Mitigation Risk Management, Filsinger Energy Partners

Mish Thadani: CEO, Rhizome

Katherine Cunningham: Engagement Manager, The Ad Hoc Group (Moderator)

3.15-3.50pm - Grid Hardening for Extreme Weather: Tech, Trade-Offs, and Strategy

Utilities face tough choices to strengthen the grid against storms, heat, and wildfires—from undergrounding and fire-resistant poles to advanced sectionalization and smart conductors. This session explores emerging technologies, operational integration, and regulatory considerations driving data-informed, resilient investment decisions.

Kumar Chandran: Senior Director, Market Strategy & Business Development, S&C

David Gladey: VP, Distribution Engineering, Eversource Energy

John Higgins: CEO, Resilient Structures

Caroline Thomas Jacobs: Director, California Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety

Bob Rowe: Senior Advisor, The Ad Hoc Group (Moderator)

3.15-3.50pm - Rethinking Reliability: Metrics for Today's Extreme Events

Traditional grid reliability metrics fall short in today's era of extreme weather events. This session explores how utilities and regulators are redefining metrics and aligning incentives with real-world performance, ensuring investments reward faster restoration, reduced customer impact, and a more resilient grid.

Michael Levy: Partner & U.S. Utilities Lead, Baringa

Dan Scripps: Chair, Michigan Public Service Commission

Josh Stallings: VP, Power Delivery Strategy & Support, Georgia Power

Peter Larsen(opens in a new tab): Staff Scientist, Energy Markets & Planning Department; Deputy for Research, Energy Analysis Division, Berkeley Lab (Moderator)

3.50-4:20pm - Coffee Break

4.20-4.40pm - Rethinking Utility Customer Experience in an Era of Climate and AI

As extreme weather intensifies and we enter a world where outages, alerts, and restoration updates are increasingly high-stakes moments, the customer interface has become part of the resilience strategy itself. This session will explore how utilities are reimagining customer engagement—using AI, automation, and real-time data to deliver faster, clearer, and more personalized communications before, during, and after major events. What are the next generation of systems that not only restore power faster but also strengthen public trust, transparency, and preparedness?

Maulik Datanwala: CEO, Convey

Timothy Davis: Chief Customer Officer, MLGW

Tracie Boutte(opens in a new tab): Executive Advisor, Chartwell; Former VP, Customer Experience Strategy, Entergy Services (Moderator)

4.20-4.40pm - From Hurdle to Strength: Workforce at the Heart of Resilience

Resilience isn’t just about technology—it’s about people. Worker safety, training and workforce development are often seen as hurdles, but they can be powerful drivers of grid strength. This panel will highlight how utilities and regulators can treat safety culture, engagement and skills development as strategic tools, ensuring reliable operations, accelerating modernization, and building a resilient workforce for the future.

Matt Crye: VP, Resilience Solutions, Itron

Dana Small: VP, Safety, Training, & Environmental, Exelon Corporation

4.50-5.25pm - From Programs to Risk: Redefining Utility Resilience

Utilities have spent years strengthening their systems through programs like vegetation management, pole replacement, undergrounding, and storm hardening. The next step in this evolution is reframing resilience around risk—focusing not just on which assets or programs reduce failure rates, but on which actions most meaningfully reduce risk to the utility and its customers. This session explores how utilities are moving from programmatic compliance and asset hardening toward enterprise-wide risk frameworks that integrate consequence modeling, weather analytics, and system criticality to guide smarter, data-driven resilience investments.

Robert Brook: SVP & GM - Americas, Neara

Abigail Phillips: VP & Chief Risk Officer, FirstEnergy

4.50-5.25pm - Building Resilience Through Better Visibility

In an era of escalating weather risk, utilities need sharper visibility into both their assets and the field conditions. AI-enabled tools are transforming what insight utilities have into field conditions, asset health, and underground infrastructure. This session will dive into how utilities are leveraging faster, more accurate data to plan, inspect, and respond—strengthening resilience from the field to the control room.

Steven Chen: CEO & Co-Founder, Treeswift

Joseph Eberly: President & Chief Growth Officer, 4M Analytics

Emily Fritze: Partner, The Westly Group (Moderator)

5.30-7.00pm - Networking Reception