By Tim Wolf
No one has to look too far to see that the cost of electricity continues to spiral upward for US consumers. Residential electricity rates in the US increased 7.3 percent from April 2025 to April 2026 (nearly double the rate of inflation over that period), according to recent reporting from Consumer Reports.
Driven primarily by increasing electricity demand, among other cost pressures, US utilities requested a record $31 billion in rate increases in 2025, according to a recent report from Powerlines, a nonpartisan consumer education nonprofit, and have already asked for another $9.4 billion in rate increases in the first quarter of 2026.
Lawmakers and regulators in more than 40 states have taken action to push utilities to address electricity affordability more effectively. Measures include performance-based ratemaking, closer scrutiny of utility capital spending, with some jurisdictions even working to tie executive compensation to affordability outcomes. In other words, electricity cost and affordability are eclipsing other issues to become a strategic priority for the industry.
“For many years we had a certain trajectory on electricity rate increases and their impact on family budgets,” said Uzma Siddiqi, principal consultant with McSid Tech who spent more than two decades at Seattle City Light leading the utility’s grid modernization efforts. “Over the last couple years, that trajectory has turned into a hockey stick and it’s really impacting families. Electricity is foundational to our lives, but the rate of cost increase is simply not tenable for many families.”
“We had a certain trajectory on electricity rate increases and their impact on family budgets. Over the last couple years, that trajectory has turned into a hockey stick.” – Uzma Siddiqi
Fittingly, this unrelenting cost spiral is the focus of GridFWD 2026, which takes place Sept. 29-30 at Snowbird Resort near Salt Lake City. Investments in grid modernization are certainly a long-term driver of increased electricity costs. But this fall’s event will look at electricity affordability through a more nuanced lens. “Reprioritizing Affordability” at GridFWD 2026 will explore how strategic investments in the grid, along with supporting policy and programs, can bend the cost curve by getting more out of current assets, reducing the need for new power plants and empowering consumers to control their own energy costs.
The annual event brings together a unique cross section of industry thought leaders to wrestle with the most challenging issues and important opportunities in our efforts to modernize the nation’s power grid. The focus of this fall’s gathering is to bring the industry’s best minds together to figure out how to optimize the role of grid modernization to mitigate the electricity affordability crisis.
“Grid Forward’s most important mission is bringing the right people together in the right setting to share knowledge, challenge conventional wisdom, and take on tough challenges,” said Bryce Yonker, president and CEO of Grid Forward. “Today, affordability is a strategic priority and we’ve engaged some of the top minds in the industry to help us move it to the top of the agenda.”
Siddiqi is one of three women who are grid modernization thought leaders and have worked closely with the Grid Forward team to put together the program for GridFWD 2026. Siddiqi is joined by Pat Hoffman, former assistant secretary of energy who’s 30-year career at the Department of Energy spanned nearly every facet of electricity delivery and grid modernization, along with Alexina Jackson, a strategic innovator and grid technologist who spent more than a decade in technology leadership positions at AES before starting her own consultancy, Seven Green Strategy. Jackson also maintains fractional leadership roles with Grid Unity and Clarum Advisors.
“The key question before us at GridFWD 2026 is how do we plan for the future given the challenges we’re facing,” said Hoffman, who now runs her own consultancy, Hoffman Insights Group. “Affordability is at the center of this, and we need to approach this in a way that’s transparent and considers the impact on consumers yet still allows the investments that are necessary to ensure reliability, resiliency and flexibility of our power grid. It’s a huge challenge.”
“We need to approach [affordability] in a way that’s transparent and considers the impact on consumers yet still allows the investments that are necessary to ensure reliability, resiliency and flexibility of our power grid.” – Pat Hoffman
This gets to the heart of the conundrum facing utility leaders, regulators and policymakers. Grid modernization costs money. How do we prioritize grid investments when affordability becomes a strategic objective?
Though they’re certainly needed, building new power plants and transmission lines will take years. With the U.S. power grid operating at just over 50 percent of its total capacity on any given day, increasing asset utilization while creating demand flexibility become the low hanging fruit to mitigate spiraling costs. These technologies and solutions will be front and center in GridFWD’s sessions, case studies and workshops, said Hoffman.
These include Grid Enhancing Technologies (GETs), hardware and software technologies that push and pull more energy through existing wires and infrastructure. It will include Virtual Power Plants that aggregate and orchestrate distributed energy resources, including rooftop solar panels, battery storage, electric vehicles, smart thermostats, HVAC systems and flexible industrial loads to provide needed additional capacity at low cost.
These are just some of the technologies that can help reduce, or at least delay, the need for new power plants, decrease transmission congestion and costs, and help consumers exert some control over their energy costs.
Jackson, who put together the Innovation Pavilion for GridFWD 2026, said the affordability challenge provides an opportunity to accelerate the adoption cycle for new grid modernization technologies that shave costs. By focusing on strategic investments, the affordability issue can be addressed, while also supporting other important grid outcomes such as reliability and flexibility.
“I think we’re entering an adoption cycle where we’re going to see things speed up and that’s exciting,” Jackson said. “Grid Forward is a unique convening of leaders from all sectors of the energy ecosystem where we can address the affordability challenge, which will require more collaboration and coordination than ever before.”
The Innovation Pavilion will feature technology solutions from a diverse group of companies – from start-ups to tech behemoths — to advance electricity affordability. Alongside these companies will be their utility customer or business partner with whom they’ve developed or deployed the solution to explain how they approached the business case and calculated the costs and benefits of the solution.
“You see technology and affordability in the same sentence and there’s a pause,” Jackson said. “How do you put those two things together? How do we advance the affordability of a system while investing another $1 million in new software technology? Answering that question is the focus and core value of the Innovation Pavilion at GridFWD 2026.”
“You see technology and affordability in the same sentence and there’s a pause. How do you put those two things together?” – Alexina Jackson
Technology alone won’t slow the rising cost of electricity. Speakers and sessions at GridFWD 2026 will challenge the assumptions behind current business models and offer new alternatives and innovations focused on DER management, dynamic rates and affordability program designs to incentivize long-term affordability.
All this and much more will be on the agenda at GridFWD 2026 as industry thought leaders gather in the Wasatch Range above Salt Lake City in late September. Perhaps Siddiqi captures it best: “GridFWD is where we ask the smartest people in the industry to give us their best ideas.”
Tim Wolf is founder and principal at Wolf Narrative LLC, specializing in storytelling and content marketing for leaders of the energy transition. (tim@wolfnarrative.com)
