Utilities are not short on data; they are challenged by fragmented operational, asset, customer, grid, and regulatory data that is difficult to trust, govern, reuse, and apply at enterprise scale. This session will show how IT leaders can position the modern data platform as a strategic business capability rather than a standalone technology investment. A capability that supports business imperatives such as reliability, affordability, customer experience, regulatory performance, and grid modernization.

The session will outline the core capabilities of an AI-ready utility data platform, including the value of governed data products; metadata and lineage; semantic layers; and self-service AI-analytic patterns. Attendees will learn how to build a stronger funding narrative by aligning platform investments to high-value use cases, measurable business outcomes, and reusable enterprise capabilities—turning each use case into both a source of near-term value and a building block for long-term data and AI maturity.

Session Takeaways:

• Recognize the key capabilities of a modern utility data platform and evaluate how they support grid reliability, outage management, asset performance, customer engagement, and distributed energy resource (DER) integration.
• Apply a business-driven framework to prioritize data platform investments based on measurable outcomes, reusable capabilities, and alignment with executive and stakeholder objectives.
• Examine high-impact use cases—including predictive maintenance, storm response optimization, customer outage communications, and AI-assisted interconnection processing—and assess their potential to drive operational and customer value.