Chartwell’s 2026 Best Practices Awards Recognize Innovative Strategies and Solutions

Alabama Power, CenterPoint Energy, and Omaha Public Power District have earned top honors in Chartwell’s 2026 Outage Best Practices Awards. The 2026 Outage Awards winners’ initiatives reflect distinctive and intentional strategies that have elevated outage response, improved operational excellence, and prioritized the customer experience.

Gold Award winners will discuss their initiatives during Chartwell’s PowerUp Conference, to be held September 22-24 in Atlanta, Georgia.

PowerUp 2026 will feature utility-defined strategies, operational best practices, and lessons learned from major events, infrastructure pressures, and rising customer expectations. Sessions will highlight how utilities are strengthening resilience, improving emergency response, coordinating across regions, and delivering clearer, more timely customer communications before, during, and after disruptions. A special rate is available to attendees who register by July 1, 2026.

This year’s winners include:

Emergency Management

Omaha Public Power District (OPPD) received the Gold Emergency Management Award for its response to a rare, once-in-500-year ice event in 2025. OPPD executed a comprehensive, safety-first emergency management response grounded in “one-voice” communications, disciplined incident command, and organizational agility. The storm brought hurricane force winds and three to five inches of ice to energized infrastructure, impacting 132,000 customers. While addressing the most significant infrastructure damage in the utility’s history, OPPD remained steadfast in its commitment to honest and frequent outage communications, consistent prioritization of safety, and an unwavering pledge to work continuously until full restoration was achieved. 

Baltimore Gas and Electric (BGE) received the Silver Emergency Management Award for the implementation of its Storm Work Queue Automation, which strengthened emergency management through the enabling of repeatable functionality within its Emergency Operations Center and support for the utility’s Incident Command team. Through the standardization of routing decisions, enforcement of guardrails, and provision of clear reporting and exception visibility, the initiative improved BGE’s ability to sustain performance, communicate with one operating picture, and remain agile across all phases of a storm response.

Hawaiian Electric received the Bronze Emergency Management Award for the modernization of its emergency communications to support its Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) program, designed to reduce wildfire risk during extreme weather conditions. The utility has implemented an omnichannel communication platform to provide proactive alerts, real-time updates, and automated customer support across its multi-island service territory. Messaging is shared via SMS, email, and/or voice notifications in an effort to provide clarity and strengthen public safety during severe weather events.

 

Outage Communications

Alabama Power received the Gold Outage Communications Award for its Estimated Restoration Time (ETR) Monitoring, Governance, and Customer Communication Program. This initiative has allowed the utility to transform outage messaging from passive system output into an actively managed customer experience. The program is supported by more than 25 ETR Monitors at Alabama Power who are responsible for reviewing, validating, and updating restoration estimates in order to tailor customer communications based on real‑time field conditions. Alabama Power’s ETR improvements are underscored by formal guidelines to ensure consistent practices, strategic cross-functional technologies, and continuous improvement efforts.

OPPD received the Silver Outage Communications Award for its storm-centered estimated time of restoration (ETR) improvements. Facing unprecedented structural damage following a blizzard and windstorm in 2025, the utility focused its efforts on strengthening communication accuracy and expediency, ultimately improving its customers’ outage journey. OPPD has embraced a “progress over perfection” outage communications model, striving to achieve diligent storm preparation, disciplined messaging, cross‑department support, and multi-channel outreach to customers.

Con Edison received the Bronze Outage Communications Award for its ability to rapidly learn, adapt, and improve customer communications during two consecutive major winter storms. Following Winter Storm Fern in January 2026, the utility examined customer feedback and operational performance, identifying how hyperlocal outage conditions, evolving restoration timelines, and delayed context can undermine customer trust. When a February blizzard struck weeks later, Con Edison applied those lessons in real time, evolving its communications to deliver more localized, transparent, and context‑rich updates aligned to customer experience. Across both events, the utility demonstrated how intentional learning, operational agility, and customer‑centric messaging can meaningfully improve trust during high‑impact outages.

 

Outage Operations

CenterPoint Energy received the Gold Outage Operations Award for the transformation of its outage processes and customer communications by translating community observations into real‑time operational intelligence. The utility has incorporated a Digital Hazard Reporting capability within its Outage Tracker Map that allows customers, first responders, and community partners to securely submit photos and report field hazards directly from mobile devices. Data received through the tool provides CenterPoint’s operations teams with immediate visual context, expediting hazard validation, crew deployment, and restoration. The Digital Hazard Reporting capability expands situational awareness beyond traditional systems into a collaborative outage operations model. The result is faster hazard reporting, improved operational response through visual verification of damage, and transparent, real‑time status updates for customers.

National Grid received the Silver Outage Operations Award for its Mobile Outage Dispatch (MOD) tool, replacing manual, phone-based workflows between field, control room, and dispatcher personnel with a digital and intuitive solution. The tool has improved outage operations during blue-sky and storm-based outages; improved data quality, including estimated times of restoration; and expedited the delivery of timely outage information to customers. Supported by strong cross-functional governance, National Grid’s MOD tool has created shared visibility of outage factors, facilitating a more efficient response.

Southern Company has received the Bronze Outage Operations Award for its Storm Resource and Logistics Management System intended to modernize outage operations and improve storm response across all its operating companies. Replacing legacy and manual processes, the solution provides a single, enterprise-wide view of outage operations using geographic visualization, real-time dashboards, and scalable cloud architecture supporting localized incidents as well as multi-state storm events. Machine learning-enabled roster imports and flexible crew management have reduced manual effort and accelerated resource staging, while enhanced coordination between storm centers and local operating areas have strengthened the overall approach to restoration among Southern Company utilities.

 

If you have any questions about Chartwell’s 2026 Outage Best Practices Awards or the upcoming PowerUp Conference, please email Keith Pierce, Senior Research Manager.