AESP Session Preview: Turning Customer Insight into Real-World Grid Resilience
This year’s AESP Annual Conference comes at a moment when utilities are being pushed on two fronts: rapidly shifting customer expectations and increasingly severe climate-driven disruptions. On Tuesday, February 24, two sessions in Grand Hall C bring those challenges into sharp focus, pairing data-driven customer insight with real-world resilience strategies that protect vulnerable communities while strengthening the grid.
Both sessions feature Resource Innovations leaders working at the intersection of customer programs, analytics, and affordability—and both are grounded in what’s actually working today.
Building Customer Resilience—From Backup Power to Analytics-Driven Efficiency
Feb. 24 | 10:45 AM–12:00 PM | Grand Hall C (1st floor)
Session 1C | Featuring Baalaji Dhanabalan, VP, Project Management
Wildfire-driven outages and public safety shutoffs are no longer edge cases. They’re defining operating conditions for many utilities. In this session, Baalaji Dhanabalan, in partnership with PG&E, explores how customer resilience programs can move beyond reactive outage response to become proactive, data-driven strategies that enable utilities to anticipate disruptions, target support more effectively, and improve overall grid resilience.
The session connects the dots between:
- Battery backup solutions that protect medically vulnerable and high-risk customers during outage events
- Advanced analytics that improve targeting, forecasting, and program effectiveness
- Energy resiliency programs that reduce grid stress while strengthening long-term system reliability
Rather than treating backup power as a standalone solution, this session shows how resilience, analytics, and efficiency can work together to build a more reliable energy future—for customers and the grid alike.
Evolving Energy Attitudes, Behaviors, and Demographics: What the Data Reveals
Feb. 24 | 1:30–2:45 PM | Grand Hall C (1st floor)
Session 2C | Moderated by Latisha Younger-Canon, Director, Advisory Services
Understanding today’s energy consumers requires more than anecdotes and surveys alone. Moderated by Latisha Younger-Canon, this session brings together insights from multiple research efforts to reveal how energy literacy, attitudes, behaviors, and demographics are shifting across generations and communities.
Attendees will learn:
- How youth energy literacy has changed amid social and political shifts—and what that means for future engagement
- Which consumer segments are evolving most quickly, including generational cohorts, rural households, and low-income communities
- How a census-based demographic framework can help utilities evaluate program reach, advance equity, and improve outcomes cost-effectively
The session challenges a common misconception: that meaningful customer insight requires constant, large-scale surveying. Instead, it shows how combining targeted surveys, segmentation, and publicly available census data leads to more timely, scalable, and actionable guidance.
How These Sessions Work Together
One session focuses on who today’s energy consumers are and how their needs are changing. The other shows how utilities can translate that understanding into programs that perform under the most demanding conditions.
Together, these sessions reflect a shared takeaway: affordable, high-performing programs start with better insight, and succeed when they’re designed for real-world stress.
Bonus Session: How Trusted Voices Can Accelerate Induction Adoption
Feb. 25 | 1:00–2:00 PM | Grand Hall A (1st floor)
Featuring Clarissa Kusel, Program Manager, CalMTA
In addition to the February 24 sessions, attendees can gain additional perspective from CalMTA, which will present research from its Chefluencer Program exploring how trusted community voices influence perceptions and accelerate adoption of induction cooking.
Program Manager Clarissa Kusel will share findings that reveal what it takes to shift awareness, overcome skepticism, and drive meaningful behavior change. The session highlights how strategic engagement—paired with credible messengers and data-driven program design—can help utilities and program administrators accelerate electrification while building lasting trust with customers.
If you’re attending AESP this year and working on customer programs, resilience, analytics, or affordability, make time for these sessions on February 24-25.