POWERUP 2026
Session Details
Check back often as the program continues to evolve
KEYNOTE – Two Hurricanes in 13 Days: Duke’s Outage Communications Transformation After Helene and Milton
In late September and early October 2024, Hurricanes Helene and Milton struck Duke Energy’s service territory within just 13 days, affecting nearly 2 million customers in…
Performance Powers Trust: The New Outage Playbook
Outages are no longer judged solely by restoration speed—they are judged by the customer experience during restoration. As customer expectations rise and regulators demand greater transparency,…
The Resilience Equation: Balancing Infrastructure, Demand, and Mutual Assistance
In an era where “unprecedented” events have become the norm, resilience is no longer a localized goal but a national imperative.
KEYNOTE – Building the Utility of the Future: How PG&E Is Advancing Resilience Through Innovation, Integration, and Preparedness
As utilities face increasingly complex threats – from wildfires and severe storms to rising customer expectations and rapid load growth – resilience has become a defining…
Public/Private Partnerships During a Crisis
When major events escalate, no single organization can respond alone. Effective coordination between utilities, government agencies, and private-sector partners becomes essential to maintaining operations, restoring service,…
PowerUp Conference Peer Roundtables
PowerUp’s interactive roundtable discussions provide attendees with an opportunity to engage directly with peers and industry leaders on today’s most pressing outage, emergency management, and resilience…
Alabama Power’s ETR Monitoring Program for Accurate Outage Communication
Alabama Power received Chartwell’s 2026 Gold Award for Excellence in Outage Communications for its Estimated Time of Restoration (ETR) Monitoring Program...
Forecasting Resilience: How Utilities Are Responding to Weather Risk
From hurricanes and wildfires to ice storms, heat waves, and flooding, severe weather is reshaping how utilities prepare for and respond to operational threats...
Digital Hazard Reporting: Turning Community Input into Operational Intelligence
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...
Navigating TCPA, AI, and Consent Risk in Utility Customer Communications
As utilities expand customer outreach through text, voice, and digital channels, the legal landscape is becoming more complex. In this timely session, communications attorney Bill Raney…
Inside OPPD’s Response to a Once-in-500-Year Ice Storm
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…
Mutual Aid to Market Forces: The New Era of Utility Resource Acquisition
As major events grow larger and more complex, utilities are rethinking how they secure the people, equipment, and contractor support needed for response and restoration. This…
Outage Communications for Business Customers: Strategies for Meeting Expectations
As expectations rise among commercial and industrial customers, outage communications are becoming a defining element of the business customer experience. This panel brings together leaders from…
Data-Driven Resilience: How Award-Winning Utilities are Redefining Restoration
Utilities are transforming outage operations through mobile tools, real-time dashboards, advanced analytics, and predictive models that improve situational awareness, resource coordination, and risk mitigation. This panel…
Building Business Continuity Across the Utility Enterprise
Utilities are rethinking business continuity as an enterprise capability that extends far beyond maintaining documentation. This panel will explore how leading organizations are integrating business continuity,…
Managing the Customer Experience Before and After the Event
Utilities often focus on the moment power goes out and the moment it is restored. But the customer experience around outages begins long before the first…
Inside Entergy’s AI Chatbot: How a New Mobile Feature Is Transforming Customer Interactions
Utility mobile apps have come a long way – and Entergy's is no exception. The ENT mobile application is now home to a new AI-powered customer…
CenterPoint’s Approach to Building All-Hazards Resilience Across the Enterprise
Following Hurricane Beryl, CenterPoint Energy accelerated significant investments in emergency preparedness and organizational resilience. But the company's transformation extends far beyond hurricane response.
Building Utility Partnerships Before Disaster Strikes
Major disasters are no longer managed by a single organization. Success depends on utilities, emergency managers, first responders, and government agencies operating as one team before,…
How OPPD Rebuilt Customer Trust with Smarter Storm Communications
When major storms strike, customers don't expect perfection — just timely, honest, and useful information. Following two of the most destructive storms in its history, Omaha…
Game-Based Emergency Management Exercises with CPS
Business continuity or any emergency plans are only valuable if employees know how to apply them when decisions matter most. To strengthen preparedness across the organization,…
Building a Practical Business Continuity Framework
Business continuity begins with understanding risk, but its value comes from turning that insight into practical readiness. In this session, CNA and utility practitioners will discuss…
Emergency Readiness at the Scale of the World’s Busiest Airport
Extraordinary events require organizations to maintain critical operations and communications while coordinating across numerous internal and external partners. At Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, those capabilities are…
Practical COOP Activation: Tools, Triggers, Templates, and Tactics That Work
Most continuity plans explain what should happen during a disruption but offer little guidance on how organizations use practical documentation tools to assess continuity needs, support…
How Alabama Power Leverages Situational Awareness to Get Everybody on the Same Digital Page
Situational awareness is no longer just about gathering information, but about ensuring everyone is working from the same operational picture. Alabama Power will share how it…
Infrastructure Under Threat: Preparing for the Unthinkable — From Fiction to Field Operations
Long-duration outages caused by wildfires, hurricanes, physical attacks, aging infrastructure, or an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) event are not just the stuff of speculative fiction but are…
