Utility executives, cybersecurity leaders and reliability experts will headline three days of keynote programming when POWERGEN returns Jan. 18-21, 2027, at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City.
The keynote slate tackles the questions dominating boardrooms across the power generation industry: how to build enough generation to meet surging demand, how to defend it, and how to keep it running reliably when the grid needs it most.
Tuesday: Supply, Demand and the Next Build Cycle
The opening keynote, “Supply, Demand and the Next Build Cycle: A CEO and COO Conversation,” runs Tuesday, Jan. 19, from 8:30 a.m. to 10 a.m.
The North American power sector is navigating a once-in-a-generation convergence of accelerating load from data centers and electrification, gas turbine order books stretched into the next decade, and capacity market price signals reshaping capital deployment. Senior utility executives will share how they are revising integrated resource plans, locking in supply chain positions and structuring large-load customer agreements, including which technologies, from advanced-class gas to nuclear to long-duration storage, are making it into resource plans and on what timeline.
Speakers include Curtis Mansfield, senior vice president of power delivery at PacifiCorp, the host utility for POWERGEN 2027; Elaina Ball, chief strategy officer at CPS Energy; and Jacob Tetlow, chief operating officer at Arizona Public Service (APS).
Wednesday: Securing the Grid in the Age of AI
Cybersecurity takes center stage Wednesday, Jan. 20, from 9 a.m. to 9:50 a.m. with “Securing the Grid in the Age of AI.”
Nation-state adversaries are pre-positioning inside U.S. utility networks, ransomware continues to disrupt operations, and the rapid integration of AI across the grid is reshaping both the threat landscape and the defender’s toolkit. The panel brings together senior security leaders from the investor-owned and public power sectors, including former federal officials who helped shape national infrastructure security policy.
Speakers include Brian Harrell, chief information security officer at FirstEnergy; Puesh Kumar, senior vice president of enterprise security, resilience and national security policy at AEP; and Adrienne Lotto, senior vice president of grid security, technical and operations at the American Public Power Association (APPA).
Thursday: Reliability, Readiness and the Performance Gap
The conference closes its keynote series Thursday, Jan. 21, from 8 a.m. to 8:50 a.m. with “When the Grid Needs It Most: Reliability, Readiness and the Performance Gap.”
With reserve margins tightening and extreme weather exposing weatherization and fuel assurance gaps, the session moves past capacity announcements to the operational realities behind the reliability numbers, including aging asset performance, the ceiling of intermittent resources in reliability emergencies, and what supply chain and workforce constraints mean for the fleet that has to be ready in 2028 and beyond.
Speakers include David Kezell, director of weatherization at ERCOT; Mark Lauby, chief engineer at NERC; Matt Gardner, vice president of power generation system operations at Dominion Energy; and Mike Carravaggio, vice president of energy supply and reliability at EPRI.
Meet the Full Keynote Lineup and inquire about sponsoring or exhibiting here.
Originally published in Factor This Power Engineering.