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— Closed to non-members (Commission members only)
— Open to all registrants
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Saturday, February 7
3:30pm – 5:00pm
Session is open:
Sunday, February 8
9:00am – 12:00pm
Separate registration required. Register
During this interactive workshop, participants will delve into NARUC’s new Wildfire Workbook to learn about key issues like data-driven risk mapping, grid hardening trade-offs, and key cost-recovery considerations. Facilitated small group discussions will focus on identifying new and emerging wildfire issues and their potential for inclusion in the Workbook.
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Sunday, February 8
9:30am – 10:00am
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Sunday, February 8
10:00am – 11:00am
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Sunday, February 8
10:00am – 11:00am
State commissions face the challenge of ensuring reliability and affordability amidst unprecedented load growth. Managed electric vehicle (EV) charging represents the single largest, fastest-growing, and most cost-effective source of flexible load available to grid operators today. By aggregating EVs into Virtual Power Plants (VPPs), utilities can harness existing customer-owned assets to provide significant grid services, defer costly infrastructure upgrades, and lower costs for all ratepayers.
This session will provide practical insights into the value of managed charging. Attendees will leave with an understanding of how to unlock this resource to meet pressing policy and regulatory objectives. This session will equip attendees with the information needed to quantify the value of managed charging, evaluate utility proposals, design effective policies, and leverage managed charging as a core strategy for enhancing reliability, ensuring resource adequacy, and improving affordability
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Sunday, February 8
11:00am – 11:15am
Session is open:
Sunday, February 8
11:15am – 12:15pm
Tentative
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Sunday, February 8
11:15am – 12:15pm
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Sunday, February 8
11:15am – 12:15pm
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Sunday, February 8
11:15am – 12:15pm
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Sunday, February 8
12:15pm – 1:30pm
Session is open:
Sunday, February 8
1:30pm – 2:30pm
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Sunday, February 8
1:30pm – 2:30pm
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Sunday, February 8
1:30pm – 2:30pm
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Sunday, February 8
1:30pm – 2:30pm
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Sunday, February 8
1:30pm – 2:30pm
Welcome & Roll Call
Approval of July 23, 2025 Minutes
Updates
Spring 2026 Commission Staff Scholarships
Applications for Support of an Event
Any Other Business
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Sunday, February 8
2:00pm – 5:00pm
Electricity demand is increasing due to growth from data centers, manufacturing, and transportation electrification. By mid-century, transportation is expected to overtake data centers as load requiring electricity. Fortunately, transportation electrification is the most flexible type of demand contributing to load growth because charging can occur at different times and locations across a wide range of vehicle types. Additionally, electric vehicle (EV) adoption is increasingly becoming more predictable. Because EV charging can be shifted to periods when the grid has spare capacity, it can improve load factors and reduce the need for the highest cost grid infrastructure investments even while other loads are growing. Tapping into vehicle charging flexibility can support affordability both in lowering overall costs required to expand and operate the grid and in reducing household expenses for customers that drive EVs.
In this workshop, participants will work with experts and each other to document practical approaches and examples for using flexibility from EVs to help support affordability. Objectives of the workshop include identifying opportunities and barriers to the increased use of EVs as flexible resources, highlighting real-world examples of utilizing EVs for flexibility, and developing key takeaways informed through participant discussions. Registrants are expected to attend the entire workshop, as materials and discussions will build toward the final outputs.
Registration is open to all Winter Policy Summit attendees, but separate registration is required in advance. Space is limited; NARUC members will have priority for seats.
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Sunday, February 8
2:30pm – 2:45pm
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Sunday, February 8
2:45pm – 3:45pm
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Sunday, February 8
2:45pm – 3:45pm
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Sunday, February 8
2:45pm – 3:45pm
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Sunday, February 8
3:45pm – 4:00pm
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Sunday, February 8
4:00pm – 5:00pm
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Sunday, February 8
4:00pm – 5:00pm
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Sunday, February 8
4:00pm – 5:00pm
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Sunday, February 8
4:00pm – 5:00pm
Joint Meeting
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Sunday, February 8
4:00pm – 5:00pm
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Sunday, February 8
4:00pm – 5:00pm
FBI led unclassified threat brief highlighting emerging phsyical and cybersecurity threats to critical infrastructure with federal and state homeland security implications.
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Sunday, February 8
5:00pm – 6:00pm
Wear Your Fave Team’s Jersey!
Session is open:
Monday, February 9
8:00am – 9:00am
(Commission Chairs Only)
Session is open:
Monday, February 9
8:30am – 9:00am
Session is open:
Monday, February 9
9:00am – 10:45am
Advanced digital technologies are the backbone of today’s power grid and other essential service industries. Yet these same technologies can expose operators to cyberattacks that have the potential to impact service delivery. This session explores the critical role cybersecurity plays in mitigating cyber threats, and strengthening defenses.
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Monday, February 9
10:45am – 11:15am
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Monday, February 9
11:15am – 12:15pm
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Monday, February 9
11:15am – 12:15pm
Water Committee Business Meeting Agenda:
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Monday, February 9
11:15am – 12:15pm
The panel will show the versatility of DER, and explain how DER can be so much more than what it is stereotyped as.
This panel will present 3-4 case studies that highlight the successful implementation of DER in a unique manner to solve grid challenges. In presenting their case studies, panelists will describe the DER solution, and detail what grid issue their DER solution was addressing, why traditional solutions could not solve the problem, the cost of the DER solution, and how the utility/regulator determined that the DER solution was successful/solved the grid challenges.
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Monday, February 9
11:15am – 12:15pm
Electricity customers across the country are facing sharp increases in their bills, with recent consumer cost increases (5.5% over the last 12 months) well outpacing inflation. These pressures strain household budgets—particularly for low-income families—and raise risks for U.S. competitiveness and national security, as electricity-intensive sectors such as Artificial Intelligence, data centers, manufacturing, and defense expand rapidly. While surging demand from data centers has grabbed headlines as a primary cause of rising costs, the reality is more complex. Additional cost drivers like infrastructure and supply chain delays, inefficient investments, and more, must also be understood by regulators to devise effective responses. This session will spotlight real customers from multiple segments who will identify key drivers of rising costs, explain how those increases impact key sectors like technology, manufacturing, retail, and agriculture, and share thoughts on potential responses.
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Monday, February 9
11:15am – 12:15pm
February 2026 marks three decades since the landmark Telecommunications Act of 1996 reshaped the communications landscape. Over that time, the nation’s telephone, broadband, and video industries have undergone remarkable transformation — moving from monopoly-era regulation to competitive markets, and from copper wire to gigabit broadband and wireless connectivity. This session will reflect on how the Act’s vision of competition and universal service has evolved in an age defined by digital convergence and streaming video, and how state public service commissions have adapted their regulatory missions amid technological and marketplace upheaval. Veteran policymakers and industry experts will explore the lessons of the past 30 years — and the continued importance of state oversight in ensuring fair, affordable, and reliable communications services for all Americans.
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Monday, February 9
12:15pm – 1:45pm
(Invitees Only)
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Monday, February 9
12:15pm – 1:45pm
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Monday, February 9
1:45pm – 2:45pm
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Monday, February 9
1:45pm – 2:45pm
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Monday, February 9
1:45pm – 2:45pm
This panel will discuss three of the barriers that are holding DER back from reaching its full potential: Interconnection processes, Utility compensation, and limited Customer Value for both participants and non-participants (e.g., can DER solutions provide reduced utility costs, leading to lower customer costs).
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Monday, February 9
1:45pm – 2:45pm
Joint Meeting
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Monday, February 9
1:45pm – 2:45pm
This panel will discuss the changes in the telecom industry as we enter the 4th decade after the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Cable is losing broadband subscribers, fixed wireless is gaining ground, and LEO has won significant BEAD offers. Will the LEO’s be able to fulfill their commitments? Is the game over for the big ILEC’s as they undertake significant downsizing? How will this impact consumers and the states?
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Monday, February 9
2:45pm – 3:15pm
Session is open:
Monday, February 9
3:15pm – 4:15pm
Last summer, Texas and California proved that grid-scale battery storage can cost-effectively tackle rising peak demand even using strikingly different energy policies and market structures. Storage helped ERCOT avoid blackouts and calls for conservation, and enabled California to export power. While half of U.S. storage in the queue targets deployment by 2026, most is in the West. Deployment in the Eastern Interconnection lags dues to interconnection delays, procurement bias, market design flaws, and outdated planning approaches. A few states show progress, but the region is far from reaping the full benefits of storage. This panel will explore barriers to storage deployment in PJM, MISO, SPP, and the Southeast, and present actionable solutions –from improved procurement methods to policy reforms – that Commissions can leverage to accelerate deployment, enhance grid resilience, and unlock the full value of storage for customers.
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Monday, February 9
3:15pm – 4:15pm
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Monday, February 9
3:15pm – 4:15pm
Update on USF Working Group
Discussion of Numbering Resolution
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Monday, February 9
3:15pm – 4:15pm
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Monday, February 9
3:15pm – 4:15pm
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Monday, February 9
4:15pm – 5:15pm
(Commission Staff Only)
Session is open:
Monday, February 9
4:15pm – 5:15pm
(Commissioner Emeritus Only)
Session is open:
Monday, February 9
4:15pm – 5:15pm
(Invitees Only)
Session is open:
Monday, February 9
4:15pm – 5:15pm
(Invitees Only)
Session is open:
Monday, February 9
4:15pm – 5:15pm
(Invitees Only)
Session is open:
Monday, February 9
4:15pm – 5:15pm
(Invitees Only)
Session is open:
Monday, February 9
4:15pm – 5:15pm
(Invitees Only)
Session is open:
Tuesday, February 10
7:30am – 8:45am
(Commissioners Only)
Session is open:
Tuesday, February 10
8:30am – 9:00am
Session is open:
Tuesday, February 10
9:00am – 10:30am
The efficient buildout of all critical infrastructure is key to meeting the urgent demands of a growing economy, achieving security, and bolstering resilience. This session will explore systemic barriers within current U.S. infrastructure permitting processes, which can lead to multi-year delays, increased costs, and stalled projects. Can we find the “sweet spot,” where needed infrastructure is permitted in a timely fashion, without compromising essential environmental, community and due process safeguards? Presenters will discuss the challenge, along with their reform wish lists and best practices in infrastructure permitting.
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Tuesday, February 10
10:30am – 11:00am
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Tuesday, February 10
11:00am – 12:00pm
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Tuesday, February 10
11:00am – 12:00pm
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Tuesday, February 10
11:00am – 12:00pm
Utility regulators continue to express concern about new large loads and the impacts they may have on electric system resource adequacy, reliability, and affordability. States are beginning to adopt large-load tariffs: rate designs tailored to serve high-demand customers while managing cost, reliability, and infrastructure needs. As more of these rate tools move from pilot to practice, regulators are asking: are they working? Are tariffs producing the desired outcomes or are cost-shift and reliability risks growing in the background? How can regulators structure accountability, oversight, and transparent reporting to track outcomes and make mid-course corrections as needed? This panel will review real-world experiences with large-load tariffs across states, highlighting key metrics and transparency practices regulators can use to assess their effectiveness.
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Tuesday, February 10
11:00am – 12:00pm
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Tuesday, February 10
12:00pm – 1:30pm
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Tuesday, February 10
1:30pm – 2:30pm
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Tuesday, February 10
1:30pm – 2:30pm
This panel will be a debate between two lively, yet to be identified, speakers who will take either side of the argument about whether AI tools can fulfill the promise of unlocking the efficient use of existing utility infrastructure, reducing utility management costs, and optimizing the energy system to generate savings on behalf of customers, or whether those benefits will be outweighed by the costs of infrastructure investment and resources necessary to support these new large loads.
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Tuesday, February 10
1:30pm – 2:30pm
Electric utilities face simultaneous pressures — rising demand, aging infrastructure, budget limits, clean energy mandates, and workforce shortages — all while maintaining high reliability expectations. To succeed under these constraints, leaders must invest in integrated, high-impact technologies that can deliver multiple benefits at once:
This panel of experts will discuss the institutional and regulatory barriers for adopting new technologies, challenges and issues experienced by technology providers, and the industry’s commitment and spending on research and development.
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Tuesday, February 10
1:30pm – 2:30pm
This panel will discuss the key questions surrounding the transition from Plain Old Telephone Service (POTs) offered over copper lines to IP-enabled services such as VoIP. How do we discontinue old services, update the PSTN, and replace TDM with fiber and fixed wireless? What is the role of the states in ensuring a successful transition, with no customers left behind?
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Tuesday, February 10
1:30pm – 2:30pm
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Tuesday, February 10
2:30pm – 3:00pm
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Tuesday, February 10
3:00pm – 4:30pm
From hurricanes to wildfires, extreme events test the resilience of critical infrastructure. These emergencies demand more than technical expertise; they require cooperation across sectors. This session examines how essential service providers and public officials overcome silos to share resources, prioritize restoration, and communicate effectively under pressure.
Session is open:
Wednesday, February 11
8:30am – 9:30am
Session is open:
Wednesday, February 11
9:00am – 10:30am
Electricity, gas, and water investment needs are rising while household budgets are not. Regulators are increasingly facing complex decisions about balancing these system needs with customer affordability. This session unpacks the trends and drivers of affordability challenges across sectors and explores what it means to customers. National experts will share current data and tools to identify and ease affordability stress.
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Wednesday, February 11
10:45am – 12:00pm
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