Grid Resilience Summit

Thursday, Oct. 24 from 12:00 - 4:00 pm l Skyline Room, Oakland Convention Center

The VERGE 19 Grid Resilience Summit is a half-day, invitation-only working session, organized in collaboration with the California Governor’s Office of Planning and Research, designed to foster the collaboration needed to transform the grid to meet climate, energy and grid resilience goals in the State of California and beyond.

California has been leading the way on clean energy solutions at the same time that wildfires and extreme weather events have threatened power grids and community well-being. Increasingly, the state’s communities and businesses are harnessing a wide range of energy and smart technologies that increase grid reliability and resilience, including deploying distributed energy resources, storage and microgrids. 

The Summit will convene private-sector leaders, state and local public officials, policymakers, utility executives and service providers in an interactive format to identify and seed potential pilot projects and collaborations. It will focus on identifying promising technologies and partnerships to evolve and future-proof the grid, ensuring reliable and affordable clean energy for all Californians. 

The solutions identified in the Summit will also be applicable to other jurisdictions, as communities strive to address the goals of climate resilience and energy security and affordability.

In Collaboration With:

California Governor’s Office of Planning and Research logo

Agenda

The Summit begins with an opening lunch to establish the focus and frame for the session. Participants will then engage in a series of facilitated discussions focused on what it will take to increase grid resilience. The Summit is designed to be an interactive, roll-up-your-sleeves experience, with few speeches and slide presentations.

What You Can Expect

  • Deep learning about what technologies and new models are on the cutting edge of advancing grid resilience, and the mandates and incentives needed to scale them

  • Focused networking with a diverse group of leaders who can be powerful and effective allies and potential partners

  • Collaborative investigation of key actions you can take, individually and through your organization, that can accelerate change

Who Should Attend

Participants include leaders in:

  • Energy utilities
  • State legislatures and regulatory agencies
  • Corporate energy and facility management
  • Public- and private-sector energy procurement
  • Finance
  • Disaster preparedness and recovery
  • Municipal government
  • Military, university and hospital facility management
  • Regional resilience and emergency response
  • Energy asset development
  • Energy and grid management software development
  • Community organizations

Topics We Will Address:

  • Ensuring reliability, affordability and accessibility as we move towards 100% clean energy

  • Implementing emergency response systems that bolster the grid’s ability to adapt to physical threats

  • Incorporating climate data and risk analysis into grid resilience planning

  • Hardening and smartening the grid against physical and cyber threats

  • Ensuring enabling technologies and business models are market-ready and deployable to advance grid responsiveness

  • Scaling solutions that enable communities to be energy resilient before, during and after disruptive events

  • Incorporating climate risk into regulatory schemes that allow the grid to evolve with changing circumstances

  • Ensuring new technologies will work together to create a comprehensive grid resilience strategy

  • Sharing lessons learned between California and other jurisdictions

Past Summit Participants