‘a Future We’d Be Proud To Build’ – Data, Ai, And…

“How many of you have read a book or seen a movie or a TV show about robots or AI trying to kill you?” Keller Rinaudo Cliffton, co-founder and CEO of Zipline, asked a crowd of thousands of energy industry professionals on Monday night.

An affirmative cheer washed over the historic Rady Band Shell at Jacobs Park, site of the DTECH 2026 keynote.

“Almost everybody, great,” Cliffton chuckled. “Today, we get to talk about robots that are trying to your life.”

Cliffton, the keynote speaker at North America’s largest utility event, hosted this year in San Diego, California, suggested people might be pessimistic about the future because we don’t talk enough about futures we’d be proud to build. His company, Zipline, is a testament to the opposite- the largest commercial autonomous system in the world, comprised of a network of battery-powered, AI-controlled delivery planes. Zipline completes a commercial delivery every 70 seconds and serves more than 4000 health facilities, companies, and national governments. The Gates Foundation estimates that the company s more than 17,000 lives each year by enabling the delivery of critical supplies and life-saving medicines to rural healthcare facilities.

“It’s so exciting to think, wow, yeah, we can use AI and robotics to solve some of the most important and pressing problems that humanity faces,” Cliffton d.

Utilities can relate to that sentiment and also appreciate the importance of partnerships, which remain critical to Zipline’s growth. The company faced resistance to operating in the United States for years, but after proving itself in Rwanda and several other African nations, Cliffton is expanding into new, huge metro areas soon: Houston, Texas, and Phoenix, Arizona. The s of Walmart, Chipotle, and other household names are essential to that happening.

“Partnerships are what make all of this possible,” confirmed DTECH’s Stephanie Kolodziej. “Everything that happens in this industry every single day: every innovation, every restoration, every line re-energized after a storm, every new customer connected to the grid. None of it happens alone. When we work together across utilities, technology providers, regulators, and communities, we not only solve problems faster- we grow stronger together.”

Data You Can Trust

Tom Deitrich, president and CEO of Itron, set the table for DTECH before Cliffton took the stage. Rising rates, increasing grid complexity, and unprecedented load growth have drawn attention to the transmission and distribution industries, and Deitrich understands the significant role that professionals him can play in shaping the future of our electric systems.

“There’s no more important, or perhaps more complex system that has ever been undertaken than what all of you work on every day,” he told the crowd. “And that’s not just because of scope or scale, but it’s because modern life depends on the grid working perfectly every day. The grid is more than just infrastructure. It safeguards economies, it protects communities, and it enables progress for the modern world.”

Deitrich argued that the grid transformation is not a slogan but a responsibility we should take seriously. Change, he posited, begins with data, a foundational element of modern utility operations.

“Today, we expect the grid to be able to manage wildfires, manage EV charging, distributed generation, aging infrastructure, workforces, weather, and volatility. And we’ve got to manage all of this at the same time in an error-free environment,” Deitrich observed. “That sort of complexity without visibility really means unbounded risk, and the key to managing that is having data. Not just any data, but data you can trust. That data can’t be a byproduct. It has to be the nervous system of the grid.”

Itron, noted for its grid-edge intelligence technologies, sees itself as a critical partner for utilities seeking that trustworthy data. Itron has deployed more than 16 million endpoints, bringing visibility across all corners of the grid. By using AI, utilities can better stage crews to respond to emergencies and repair damaged equipment more quickly. They can mitigate wildfires and optimize construction with digital twins.

“These are just a few examples of ways that data can be put to work and used as the modern language of the grid,” Deitrich said. “Trusted data tells us what’s happening, why it’s happening, and, most importantly, what will happen next. These are not future possibilities. These are present realities.”

“Transformation is absolutely not about abandoning what you have built, but it is extending it with intention, layer by layer, insight by insight, decision by decision, start from where you are, and you can accelerate forward.”

Deitrich doesn’t see artificial intelligence as the future of the grid because it’s already in the grid. Nor does he expect it to replace leadership- at least any time soon. Rather, AI can shape how leadership reacts. It can predict failure, forecast demand, and model power flows. It can enhance safety and clarify investment- it is a decision partner, not an authority.

“No technology alone can transform the grid. It’s people that do. It’s all of us,” Deitrich confirmed. “The most powerful intelligence in the grid today, and for some time, is absolutely human field crews that show up and know what to do when a storm happens, engineers that design for resilience.”

Exciting Times at SDG&E

Scott Crider, president of DTECH 2026 host utility San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E), sat down with Deitrich for a fireside chat to discuss what’s new. Crider claimed the present might be the most exciting time in the company’s 140-year history.

“We’re really becoming incubators of innovation with a lot of new technologies and a lot of new customer experiences,” he d. “I think we’re really setting the bar and really moving this industry forward.”

Crider focused on three core areas of innovation for his utility. The first is modernizing its business.

“We know that we’ve got to change. We’ve got to evolve. We’ve got to set ourselves up for the next 20, 30, 40, or 50 years for our customers,” said Crider.

Another priority for SDG&E is safety and resilience, given California’s extreme wildfire risk. A devastating wildfire sparked by utility equipment in 2007 gave birth to a “never again” ethos within SDG&E. The utility has since expanded its mitigation tactics from a single meteorologist to using AI weather modeling and leveraging a drone program and an AI camera network trained for smoke detection. Crider cited investments in technology and grid improvements to not only mitigate some of that risk but also to harden the system to accommodate more distributed energy resources (DERs) such as electric vehicles and rooftop solar.

Last, but certainly not least on Crider’s mind, is affordability.

“Consumers are frustrated with the cost of everything right now, and so we’re doing our part to get our cost of service down even more, working with our policy makers to make sure that energy remains affordable for customers,” he stated.

Deitrich, Crider noted the importance of data in the evolving grid. No longer is data technology just under the domain of a utility’s IT department- it’s baked into operations for nearly everyone. SDG&E is launching a new AI Academy and AI ambassador program later this year, which Crider hopes will expand access to technology, tools, and data.

Data Solving Problems for Customers

Affordability is on the mind of all utilities right now, including fellow California utility Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E). Mike Delaney, vice president of strategy and innovation, d an anecdote with DTECH attendees about how PG&E is saving customers money by solving problems with smart data.

Using AMI 2.0 grid edge intelligence to modulate load, PG&E can accommodate some customers seeking to add an electric vehicle, even if they might typically need to upgrade their panel. The result is thousands of dollars d- by the customer and the utility- and the gift of time.

“We can go from having a project that could take six to 12 months down to pretty much the next day,” ventured Delaney. “It’s an exciting thing to be working on in a way that really drives real impact, not only in people’s lives, but when at scale, it’s billions of dollars of savings for our customers, which results in real cost and rate savings.”

Delaney said PG&E’s Innovation Summit highlights two important components of its business model.

“One is the concept of open innovation. We know that we’re not going to be able to solve all of our challenges ourselves,” Delaney admitted. The second component is a ruthless whittle-down selection process for its projects to provide maximum returns to ratepayers.

“The mission we have within the innovation team at PG&E is to deliver 10x returns for our customers,” Delaney asserted. To do that, the utility leans into partnerships its one with Itron.

“There’s real value in this, and this is the chance for partnerships to multiply the impact that we can have. The AMI 2.0 used to help customers electrify faster and cheaper is now being applied to other things real-time grid awareness,” he said. “We’re able to pinpoint fault locations and send our crews to the right spot right away… And that same technology can be used to help mitigate potential wildfires.”

Duke Not Leaving Its Customers in the Cold

Richard Donaldson, Duke Energy’s senior vice president and chief information officer, was a scheduled speaker in DTECH’s keynote program. A massive winter storm rocking the Carolinas over the weekend put his appearance into jeopardy, but Donaldson “delivered the mail,” as he s to say, both by making it out to California and by keeping the lights on for his customers.

“We set load records in three of the states we operate in, and the 26,000 men and women who work at Duke Energy, they did exactly what they do. They got the mail out. We served every single one of our customers, “Donaldson boasted to a round of applause. “I want to be clear, I did my part. Right before I left for the airport, I turned the thermostat down to 55. I left, and I have not heard from my wife all day,” he joked.

Donaldson discussed important investments enhancing Duke’s real-time data visibility, which started with the simple business case of not wanting to drive out and read meters.

“Fast forward to today, we literally have dozens of applications that we have built in-house that do everything from analyzing usage data from the meter all the way back. The number of intelligent devices we have on this honking grid is just incredible. We’re pulling all that data back, and we’re forecasting better, not just near term, but long term, and then we’re planning better,” Donaldson said.

AMI 2.0 introduced a treasure trove of data into Duke’s systems, and with partners AWS, the utility is now capable of incredible things.

“We used to run our system calculations, and it took us six weeks,” he d. “We now run the entire system in about six hours. So, soak on that for a little while. Go cloud!”

Impactful tools and technology have never been more accessible, Donaldson believes, and the future is bright.

“I can honestly say I’ve never been more optimistic about where we are as an industry,” he ventured. “We have the data that can reveal the truth. We have the visibility where it matters most in the grid. We understand where it is, and we have the ability to have control out at the edge of the grid.”