Meet envelio at GridFWD 2026

Utilities are increasingly dependent on software platforms, cloud computing, data infrastructure, artificial intelligence, and other digital assets to operate and modernize the grid. Yet traditional cost-of-service ratemaking often creates uneven incentives for investment by favoring capital expenditures over operating expenditures. Moreover, conventional cost of service regulatory frameworks designed around tangible capital investments may not adequately recognize the value of software, cloud computing, cybersecurity, analytics, and other digital capabilities.

This panel will explore the status quo regulatory model with its distinctive treatment of opex versus capex. In addition, panelists will discuss and evaluate incentives and cost recovery pathways for investments in digital infrastructure, examine the role of capitalization policies, and consider whether alternative approaches such as TOTEX can create more technology-neutral incentives.

Perspectives from regulators, policy experts, utilities, and technology providers will highlight emerging best practices for ensuring regulation supports innovation and the energy transition while protecting customers.

Learn how the Intelligent Grid Platform (IGP) helps utilities:

As electrification accelerates and distributed energy resources reshape demand patterns, electric utilities must support rapid load growth while keeping rates affordable for consumers. Meeting this challenge requires more than expanding infrastructure. It requires smarter planning, better utilization of existing grid assets, and the ability to orchestrate flexible resources across the system.

In this session, envelio and an E.ON operating company, Europe's largest distribution utility, will share how modernized grid planning supports electrification while maintaining cost discipline.

By leveraging envelio’s IGP to build a validated digital grid model and integrate asset data, consumption patterns, and queued interconnection requests, the E.ON operating company introduced automated analysis and time-series simulations to better understand system behavior under future load and DER scenarios. These capabilities enable planners to proactively identify grid constraints and maximize grid utilization before committing to costly infrastructure upgrades.

The solution also supports model orchestration. With more integrated grid data management and planning processes, utilities coordinate distributed resources and make investment decisions based on consistent, transparent analysis.

E.ON's experience demonstrates how strategic grid technologies and modern planning practices can help utilities manage rapid load growth, unlock additional capacity from existing infrastructure, and control long-term electricity costs for consumers.