A comprehensive guide to the Forum 2024 agenda

By Sara Patnaude
August 7, 2024

A comprehensive guide to the Forum 2024 agenda

For nearly 40 years, we’ve created an unforgettable and valuable E Source Forum experience. With that in mind, we’re making some improvements for this year’s event! Based on attendee feedback, we’ve tweaked the format for Forum 2024.

Save the date for E Source Forum 2025

Forum will take place October 6–October 8 in downtown Denver.

Save the date

We’ve curated a cumulative track system for this year’s sessions. This change is intended to enhance your learning and networking experience. It also allows you to immerse yourself deeper in a specific topic, with sessions building on each other to expand your learning.

We encourage you to register for your preferred track and remain there throughout the Forum for a more concentrated learning experience. This year’s tracks include:

  • Affordability and equity
  • Customer experience
  • Efficient and flexible decarbonization
  • Electric transportation
  • Marketing and communications
  • Storage and distributed energy resources (DERs)

Below is a guide to this year’s tracks, designed for mid- and senior-level professionals looking to gain new insights to bring back to their teams.

A comprehensive guide to the Forum 2024 agenda

Dive even deeper into this year’s Forum agenda

Affordability and equity

In this track, we’ll address crucial industry issues from the C-suite down. Sessions will have a special focus on making the business case for energy equity at your utility, figuring out how to operationalize it, setting goals and metrics for success, and integrating equity across your operations and your customer-side program portfolio.

Session spotlight! Define and guide equity initiatives at your utility using customer data

Wednesday, October 9 | 1:00 p.m.–2:00 p.m. MT

To meaningfully pursue energy equity for customers, utilities must set clear definitions, goals, and success metrics for equity based on the unique challenges the communities they serve are facing. Utilities will also need to use benchmarking and data analytics to measure progress toward their programs’ goals, discover key insights, and inform smart decisions that will lead to equitable outcomes.

In this session, we’ll explore how leading utilities are defining, measuring, and tracking their customer equity efforts. And we’ll cover how you can use these tactics to define and guide equity initiatives at your utility.

Customer experience

Tailored to meet the needs of strategists across customer experience, contact centers, digital channels, and key account teams, these sessions look at customers’ needs in the wake of utility complexities such as higher bills and wildfires.

Session spotlight! Identify the drivers of customer dissatisfaction through VOC data

Wednesday, October 9 | 9:00 a.m.–10:15 a.m. MT

Customer satisfaction is a great way to understand the customer experience and measure your performance. But you should also be looking at the opposite. What’s upsetting your customers and causing their dissatisfaction?

In this session, we’ll highlight E Source voice-of-the-customer (VOC) data for business and residential customers. We’ll identify what’s most hurtful to utility-customer relationships. We’ll also hear from utilities with advanced VOC programs on how they developed these programs and how they’re acting on the data to improve customer outcomes.

Efficient and flexible decarbonization

Designed for data-driven decision-makers, these sessions will help shape the utility’s portfolio strategy. They’ll help ensure alignment with regulatory customer-facing portfolio mandates and customer needs for energy efficiency, demand response, and building electrification.

Session spotlight! Searching for zero: Developing future-proof decarbonization strategies

Wednesday, October 9 | 10:30 a.m.–11:45 a.m. MT

Ambitious greenhouse gas goals and mandates are on the horizon for all of us, but it’s a tall order. We’re trying to reinvent a century-old business model for the next hundred years. Join us for executive perspectives on decarbonization and learn how utility leaders are tackling such an enormous and complex issue by working across departments, collaborating with governments, and developing roadmaps to lead their organizations into the future.

Electric transportation

We created this track to help utility transportation electrification teams redefine their work in a major way. Sessions in this track will share new opportunities and discuss how we can apply all our customer-centric program recommendations to sell more electrons and minimize infrastructure upgrades.

Session spotlight! How do we crack the code on EV managed charging?

Wednesday, October 9 | 4:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m. MT

Traditional event-based demand response strategies have yielded smaller-than-expected load impacts when applied to EVs because of limited asset availability, communication complexities, unbalanced program costs, and more. Although passive approaches like time-of-use rates have shown some success, they may prove inadequate as EV adoption surges.

A more promising avenue involves actively managing EV charging based on distribution system needs. But many utilities lack robust frameworks to accurately quantify the benefits of such strategies or to secure buy-in for EV load management in capacity planning. To help navigate these challenges, we’ll explore how leading utilities are approaching these issues and envisioning the next generation of EV managed charging programs.

Marketing and communications

The main theme of this track is using technology and data to reach customers more effectively. The track is designed for marketers who are campaign planning and developing strategies for the next five years.

Session spotlight! Navigating changes that come with adopting AI

Wednesday, October 9 | 4:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m MT

Ready or not, here AI comes. AI is here to stay, and although it likely won’t take your job, someone who knows how to use AI might. This can be scary, but it’s a reality you should prepare yourself and your colleagues for.

In this session, we’ll explore how to integrate AI tools and technology into you and your marketing team’s daily routine. We’ll also explore AI’s impact on marketing as a whole.

Storage and DERs

This track caters to those exploring how energy storage is a key piece of a larger portfolio that utilities need to consider if they want to decarbonize, have a more flexible load, and create a more resilient grid.

Session spotlight! Customers DERiving the change in fleet electrification

Thursday, October 10 | 9:00 a.m.–10:15 a.m. MT

Commercial fleet electrification has emerged as a crucial driver in reducing carbon emissions and supporting cleaner transportation. But switching from combustion to electric presents challenges with infrastructure and energy management. Harnessing small- and medium-scale renewable energy and using DERs and energy storage systems can provide a consistent energy supply.

In this panel discussion with commercial customers, you’ll hear real-world examples of how they’re making this work. They’ll offer insights and encourage cooperation between commercial customers and utilities to create fleet electrification strategies that work for everyone.


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