Unpacking 2024, with satisfaction.

Lake Louise in Alberta, Canada. Taken by Alexina Jackson in October 2024.

2024 was a big year that went fast and ended with a big change. It was marked by some meaningful thought-pieces as part of my former role at the AES Corporation, where I formed and led the innovation initiative related to digitalization of the electric grid. I participated as a speaker in more than 25 conferences or webinars. I spoke at the White House and built strong, collaborative relationships with fantastic colleagues in the Department of Energy. I grew my network of fun and committed professionals in industry, innovative startups, trades, think tanks, government, finance, and much more. I had fun doing podcasts and interviews and felt deep motivation from the impact of my ideas and ability to connect with others. Oh, and I had an amazing team working and growing with me in this adventure.

This post catalogs by approximate calendar month the highlights of 2024 and links to source information where available and appropriate. I can only hope (and strive!) to make 2025 as productive, but it is sure to be its own adventure without a doubt.

January

2024 started strong with significant advocacy related to dynamic line ratings (DLR). This grid enhancing technology (GET) comes in a number of technological variations, ranging from software-only solutions to hardware-enabled software solutions. The software-only solutions include more accurate and higher fidelity weather adjusted line ratings, and others that also add a situational awareness of the physical aspects of the grid and its surrounding environment. The hardware-enabled software solutions include in-line, on-line, and eyes-on-line solutions. Regardless of the specific technology, DLR creates a more accurate view of the carrying capacity of electrical lines to understand how much energy can be safely carried across the grid and enables more informed decision-making about the investments that can be made to improve the throughput of power. The results of DLR technology are helpful from an efficiency and utilization perspective, a safety and reliability objective, and for good investment and grid planning strategy.

In January, through AES and T&D World, I provided comments on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). The article highlights some of the great and practical work that AES had already advanced using those tools and also highlighted how ML and then AI might show up to support an increasingly digital electrical grid. I believe this article is still relevant and showcases the innovative thinking in AES' core businesses. Kudos to them.

February

February continued the theme of weather adjusted line ratings and ML / AI (as I like to order them). Two former team members and two AES colleagues wrote a helpful technical paper on ambient impacts on line ratings and the ability to use dynamic data sets to inform grid planning. The paper won an IEEE Best Paper award later in the year, demonstrating just how useful this paper is.

I spoke at RE+ NE on two panels. The first with colleagues from Eversource, LineVision, and BGS on technology innovations and advancing solutions to the interconnection queue. The second alongside colleagues from Avangrid, Schneider Electric, and Camus Energy on ML / AI and how they can support grid modernization and address climate change. This second panel led to a follow-on article by SEPA and I got to do an interview with SunCast Media during the event!

March

March contained two exciting speaking opportunities, one a panel at CERAWeek on the need for transformation to a smart, modern electrical grid. The other was a webinar with C3E Women in Clean Energy on the value of data and digitalization of the grid. The panel, slides, and webinar recording can be found here.

April

In April, my former team at AES published a white paper on grid enhancing technologies (GETs), including DLR, advanced power flow control, topology optimization, and battery storage. The paper includes an overview of those technology, some potential off-the-shelf use cases, and a thoughtful section on policy support that could accelerate scale deployment of the digital technologies. I later discussed the contents on episode 160 of the POWER Podcast. This paper and the one below live on at AES, and I think they are a useful read for business, policy, and engineering professionals alike.

Also in April, my former team at AES published a second white paper highlighting lessons learned from a 2023 deployment of DLR solutions at the AES utilities. This paper was later covered by Maeve Allsup of Latitude Media in an article titled "Can AES rally utility support for dynamic line rating?" While my opinion is that my former team and I and AES cannot take all the credit, we were definitely part of a 2024 movement that has made DLR a commonly referenced solution for an efficient and fully utilized electrical grid.

Icing on the cake of April was to be quoted along energy industry leaders from DOE, EEI, New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, and Grid Strategies in an article by Cat Clifford of Cipher media.

May

May took me out to California to an IEEE PES T&D conference to present alongside colleagues from DOE, National Grid, and LineVision. Our panel on grid efficiency and modernization, with examples on EV adoption, was moderated by WATT Coalition. The IEEE event was closely followed by a panel hosted by GridForward on Scaling Advanced Grid Solutions. A recording of that webinar can be found toward the bottom of this linked GridForward page.

With great excitement I closed May out with a visit to the White House to speak on a panel related to modernization of the power grid. While to video is no longer available, the WATT Coalition provided a two-part summary of the event (my bit falls in part two).

June

The hot days of June began with a spot on Uplight's blog (with video included) discussing the idea of a digitally enabled grid, as well as growing data center load, grid-scale batteries, and opportunities for non-wires solutions (or NWAs). And never far from my thoughts, the potential role for energy consumers in energizing clean energy transformation.

Leaning into the heat of the summer, off I went to Las Vegas to speak as part of EEI 2024's Technologies & Innovation Showcase alongside LineVision, highlighting again the unique value that DLR technologies can provide utilities. I closed out the month on a GridTECH Connect panel on interconnection challenges and innovations.

July

July started with episode 218 of the Clean Power Hour, on which I again covered the value of GETs, this time fully set within the context of the benefits of transforming the electrical grid from an analog system into a digital, dynamic, and distributed network. Efficiency, education, and regulatory support are touched on, as well as decarbonization, grid reliability, and affordability.

August

August was kindly a quiet month as far as externally facing work went. I mean, we all need a break, right? More accurately, I was gearing up for a busy second half of the year and making plans for 2025.

September

I was back in California in September at the RE+ 2024 annual event, again on two panels and discussing artificial intelligence. The first panel was a discussion of the benefits and risks, limitations and opportunities of using ML and AI to support grid planning and operations. The second was a more technical discussion of the current and future applications of AI to an increasingly digital grid.

Closing out September, my former AES team and I launched a white paper and call to action with Tapestry, Google's X, the moonshot factory initiative to create a digital grid platform. The white paper is a high-level, but still technical, vision for a digital grid architecture. It covers the motivations for and function of a digital grid and related architecture today, tomorrow, and into the future past 2040. The launch coincided with NY Climate Week activities, including a panel discussion at a Google hosted event. The paper was well-covered by Stephen Lacey of Latitude Media, highlighting our arrival at a technological moment in which a digital grid could come to fruition and the unique role that AI could play in a future digital grid.

October

The final quarter of 2024 started with a trip to Banff that enabled me to capture the picture at the top of this post. It was there that I joined GridForward and Camus Energy to talk about the results of a collaborative analysis between AES and Camus to understand how early in a utility's journey of EV integration does it make clear economic sense to procure software that can actively identify and manage EV charging (spoiler, it is early!). Essential additional insights related to the value of being able to visualize grid assets and then coordinate them effectively; that with visibility and control, planners can make less conservative planning assumptions and rely on operators to solve real-time reliability issues; and how with the preceding modernizations, utilities are in a position to make more informed decisions about when and where to invest resources to upgrade the grid.

October closed with an appreciated opportunity to speak on a panel at the 2024 CAISO Symposium alongside DOE, Pattern Energy, PG&E, and LS Power. The panel discussed how to plan and build transmission, while also considering innovative approaches that help us make the most of the grid in place and the newly built grid as well.

November

November was the other well-need quiet month of 2024. Once again spent planning for 2025, this time organizing myself for departure from AES. Yes, that was the big change I mentioned at the start of this post. My nearly 11-year run with AES was winding down in November and I was starting to contemplate what would come next.

December

2024 ended with two final conferences and a podcast, this time in my individual capacity and not as an AES person. The first conference was DOE's Deploy24, which highlighted the exceptional work of the organization throughout 2024, and provided an opportunity to engage with leading thinkers in grid modernization and innovation (covering both bulk power and distribution system topics).

The next (and final!) conference of 2024 was GridConnext, during which I connected in a smaller setting with people interested in exploring how to advance from a utility culture of technology piloting to timely scaling of innovations. Deployment of innovative solutions is a journey that requires courage to start and a good strategic plan to execute. That journey becomes less daring when good data is available to light the path and clarify risks.

2024 (and this post) ended with a spot on the Wicked Problems podcast, also its last of the year. In this podcast, we dug in on the value of modernizing the grid and embracing a digital transformation. The episode offers a good wrap-up of the year's themes (although not on the nose), discussing GETs, ML / AI, the value of visualization and control, and smart investment decisions. Many thanks to Richard for helping tie a bow on 2024. Phew!

Alexina Jackson, managing member of Seven Green Strategy

P.S., yes, this ^^^ Seven Green Strategy thing is what I'm doing now and how I have kicked off 2025. Should be exciting! Let's connect about it and see what impact we can create.