The Grid at a Turning Point: Recapping IEEE PES T&D 2026

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
As a professional involved in electricity delivery, The T&D World Podcast and tdworld.com is your definitive source for breaking news, industry updates and more. We've got you covered from transmission to distribution and everything that affects the power grid. And now on to today's episode.

**Nikki Chandler** (0:21)
Welcome to the T&D World Live Podcast. Today, we're going to be recapping our experience at the 2026 IEEE PES T&D Conference and Exposition in Chicago, which honestly felt bigger and busier than ever.
And joining me is Amy Fischbach. She's our Head of Content for T&D World. And she's been with us many years. She's been covering utility operations, field crews, and grid modernization. So if you're on the line worker side, you really know Amy, but now she's really kind of jumping into the bigger audience and some of these events here. So we are very excited to have her as one of our leaders for T&D World. So welcome, Amy.

**Amy Fischbach** (1:09)
Thank you so much, Nikki. It's great to be here.

**Nikki Chandler** (1:12)
Yeah. So, Amy, I think this was your first IEEE PES T&D. I mean, I know that you've been helping with the magazine for many years, but and you've been to a lot of lineman's radios, probably most of them.
But yeah. So was this your first IEEE PES?

**Amy Fischbach** (1:29)
Yes. This is my first show and I was absolutely blown away by the size and scope of the event. I mean, there were people there from all over the world, and they were all there to talk about the power industry. So that blew me away just how big the event was and how many different discussions were going on about the power industry and how everybody came together to solve problems.
Yeah.

**Nikki Chandler** (1:54)
That's what's really neat about IEEE PES. This year was a little bit different, but we'll talk about that in a minute. So it really is like the Super Bowl of the power industry. I know I heard one of the moderators say that on one of the sessions and I thought, yeah, that's probably really true, especially for core T&D industry. But so at the show, everywhere you look on the floor, there's massive equipment, there's utility engineers, utilities talking about their billion-dollar investments, and then somehow you walk 20,000 steps without realizing it. Actually, I don't know that I got that far, but I did get pretty high.
So, and we did, we got to do a little bit of everything this year, factory tours, technical sessions, walking a lot. So was there any part of the event that stood out to you immediately?

**Amy Fischbach** (2:50)
I think just the fact that there were people there from all over the world, and the international presenters, I think really gave a lot of interesting insight into the power industry, just seeing what was going on globally, I think really stood out. There were exhibitors there from all over the world, and they had, inside their booths, they were showing what the transmission systems looked like in different countries, for example.
On one of the super session panels, they had a presenter named Gerald Chandler, who was talking about what was going on in Germany. And he was saying that they're facing some of the same challenges that the American utilities are, but the differences are focusing a lot more on renewable energy, especially solar. So I found that very fascinating. And then plus, the IEEE PES really seems to be taking a global perspective on the power industry.

**Nikki Chandler** (3:47)
Yeah. And I really thought that too. And IEEE PES has been really global, but this year, and we're going to talk about this, their Vision 2050 research initiative they have going on.
They looked at some findings globally. So, and like I said, they announced this research initiative in their opening session on Tuesday morning. And it really is this massive global research project and effort to look at the future of energy. And what I thought was cool is the role that engineers are going to play in it. So, they said they gathered data from focus groups. And I know they're still working on this, but they were showing some of their initial findings. But they had data from focus groups, interviews, and surveys around the world to understand how people think about energy, reliability, affordability, clean energy, all of that.
So, some of the findings, I didn't think were that surprising, just because we're just in this industry so much. But they're really still important. So, and I will say that one thing that stood out to me was that the North American consumers tend to prioritize affordability over clean energy. You mentioned Germany, but this is kind of compared to Europe and Asia. But when it comes to meeting that future demand, like we said, it's really more about affordability for North America. But they did say that consumers in Europe and Asia were more likely to prioritize that clean energy first.