To all of the longtime Energy Central Community members, newer readers, and curious power professionals just finding us—welcome to our latest Special Issue. We’re so thrilled you’re here.
The content you’re about to enjoy is forward-thinking, deeply thoughtful, and tremendously impactful for our industry. It all covers what I think is one of the most important transformations in power in recent memory: the Digital Utility.
Like any industry, ours is faced with an existential question as we move further into the future: either fight the digital revolution or embrace it, accepting the unique promise and opportunity that technological transformation brings to bear. We’ve been encouraged to see just how many of our 200,000+ Energy Central members are wholeheartedly embracing next-gen tech—especially as it pertains to digital utilities.
In the call for articles for this Special Issue, I wrote this:
“The truly digital utility is going to be a game changer. Smart digitalization has seemingly endless possibilities: reducing utilities’ carbon footprints, improving reliability, supporting evolving energy resources, helping meet record demand, and lowering costs derived from cloud-computing and data analytics, to name a few.”
And the forthcoming articles, papers, and conversations in this edition show just how meaningful these possibilities are for our industry. In fact, we received a near-record number of submissions for this edition—suggesting that many of you recognize change on the horizon…and like what you see.
I hope you enjoy what you read in this Energy Central Special Issue and learn something new. This is our last Special Issue of the year, and we’re thrilled to end 2024 with such a robust curation of conversation-driving themes, big steps forward, and your ideas.
Two reminders, as always: 1) We often receive more submissions than we can include in this issue, so be sure to read through all the articles included on our Special Issue Topic Page. And 2) We encourage you to leave thoughts, questions, and ideas in the comments section for the following pieces’ authors to respond.
Thank you for reading!
—Kinsey Grant, Smooth Media cofounder and head of content
By the way: If you have any thoughts, questions, or ideas for our content and community efforts, I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to book some time on my calendar right here.