Meeting the Moment: Industry Leaders Chart the Course for Power in 2026

Aaron Larson

Fri, January 2, 2026 astatine 7:20 AM CST 18 min read

From artificial intelligence-driven ratio to transmission bottlenecks, powerfulness manufacture insiders stock their perspectives connected the opportunities and obstacles shaping 2026 and beyond. The powerfulness procreation assemblage enters 2026 astatine a captious inflection point. Electricity request is surging—driven by information centers, manufacturing reshoring, and proscription electrification—even arsenic the manufacture navigates an unprecedented translation successful however powerfulness is generated, transmitted, and consumed. Utilities and autarkic powerfulness producers look the dual situation of maintaining grid reliability portion transitioning to cleaner vigor sources, each amid regulatory uncertainty and shifting marketplace dynamics. This twelvemonth promises to beryllium pivotal for decisions that volition signifier the industry’s trajectory for decades. From the continued buildout of renewable capableness to the integration of artificial quality (AI) into grid management, 2026 volition trial the sector’s quality to equilibrium innovation with pragmatism.

“The grid volition go adjacent much AI-enabled successful the adjacent twelvemonth arsenic AI becomes indispensable for utilities to beryllium much efficient,” Pradeep Tagare, caput of Investments with National Grid Partners, told POWER. “In our caller Utility Innovation Survey, we saw this successful existent time: utilities are nary longer treating AI arsenic ‘nice to have,’ but alternatively arsenic a strategical instrumentality to negociate load growth, alteration reliability, and accelerate grid expansion. Due to the pressures that the electrification of heating, transport, and information halfway enlargement spot connected the grid, AI-driven forecasting, hazard mitigation, and infrastructure readying tools volition go essential.” Albert Hofeldt, Chief Product Officer with Power Factors, said optimization has ever been a precedence for renewable vigor operators, but it has taken connected a caller value implicit the past fewer years. “Returns for renewable vigor projects are shrinking, a motion of our existent economical discourse and a awesome of maturity for the market. Rising involvement rates person accrued the outgo of capital, portion fiscal enactment from authorities and national governments disappear, pushing costs backmost onto developers. The renewable vigor marketplace is mature capable present to grip these changes, but it increases the unit to physique a bulletproof concern model. In galore cases, renewable vigor companies are realizing that improving accumulation and reducing aboriginal costs tin really present a greater and safer instrumentality implicit clip than a caller development,” helium told POWER. “Machine learning and AI person a large relation to play successful expanding accumulation from existing assets,” Hofeldt added. “AI tin foretell issues with underperforming assets earlier, making it imaginable to behaviour attraction with little downtime, yet maximizing vigor accumulation and revenue. It tin besides place the basal origin of underperformance, helping operators prioritize issues rapidly and program attraction truthful that the highest-impact fixes are done first.”