Crystal Ball 2025: Outlook for the power and utility sector

A note from Scott Achelpohl, managing editor, Smart Industry:

Welcome to the Crystal Ball Report for 2025, which will appear in this web space the rest of December and into January as a series of contributed pieces from esteemed experts in manufacturing technology.

We've invited these thought leaders to look into their "crystal balls" and tell us what's ahead (with an emphasis on data, AI, and cybersecurity). So please enjoy the series and, from all of us at SI, have a happy and safe holiday season.

Cybersecurity will be top of mind for utilities as cyber risks expand with a decentralized grid. Evolving regulatory frameworks are making it easier for distributed energy resources, like electric vehicles, rooftop solar, in-home connected thermostats, or even small modular reactors (SMRs), to connect to the grid.

And as more businesses and consumers engage in bi-directional power flow with electrical assets on the grid, there are more points of access to the grid, creating potential vulnerabilities that need to be addressed.

In response, utilities need to bolster their own cybersecurity practices, including examining their technology supply chain, data access and management practices, and a hardened infrastructure design with digital twin technology to ensure reliable operations and regulatory compliance.

Decentralized power will change the energy landscape, driving new opportunities and challenges. In 2025, there will be a continued shift towards a more decentralized power grid as technology advances, regulatory and clean-energy policy objectives progress, and load demand creates grid congestion.

While utilities will need to address the challenges of maintaining a balanced and reliable grid with changing grid dynamics, others see this as an opportunity for expanding business models, such as independent power producers (IPPs) and microgrid operators.

As the power and utility industry ecosystem expands, utilities’ role and technology priorities will evolve as the industry grapples with balancing a more complicated grid.

More of what's to come in the Crystal Ball Report for 2025:

Insights on 2025 from conversations with manufacturers, by Josh Cranfill, Quickbase
AI, automation, and insider threat detection, by Chris Scheels, Gurucul
Business leaders should look inward to identify what they can control, by Michael van Keulen, Coupa
Cybersecurity trends that will reshape private content security, by Patrick Spencer, Kiteworks
Configurability, modularity, and AI: The 2025 challenges, by Damantha Boteju, Henrik Hulgaard, and Daniel Joseph Barry, Configit
IT and OT convergence will be cybersecurity stress test, by Aron Brand, CTERA
2025 prediction thread, by various authors
Your opinion counts: Results from SI's reader poll on 2025, by Scott Achelpohl, Smart Industry

The year of an evolving utility control room

Driven by holistic network model data, the utility control room of the future will begin to take shape. The role of traditional utilities is evolving as they face new dynamics and challenges in managing their business objectives.

To get ahead, utilities will increasingly rely on network model driven software solutions as a single source of truth for OT and IT stakeholders at utilities, and the more robust and accessible the model is across the organization, the more intelligent and successful the utility will become.

This data-centric infrastructure will improve alignment across planning, operations, and maintenance functions while also enabling interoperability with external operators to truly enable the utility of the future.

A cautious approach to AI as a way to build efficiency

Utilities will look to AI cautiously as a way to improve operational efficiency in the face of an onslaught of data, more complex operations, and resource shortages.

Utilities are already starting to use AI to help manage increasing grid complexity. Power generation is set to nearly triple by 2050, requiring corresponding growth in the electric grid. This growth will add new assets to the grid that will provide more data back to control rooms than ever before.

Podcast: Smart metering—should your plant make the switch?

The perfect storm of power generation and grid infrastructure growth with new technologies and consumer-engagement will drive an exponential growth in data to be sorted, managed, and acted upon within the utility. Gone are the days of paper maps, whiteboard job orders, and limited field crew communication.

As veteran utility workforces are set to retire, a new generation of utility operators require AI technology to sort through the noise of complex grid data to ensure safe, efficient, and resilient utility service.

See also: The 2024 Crystal Ball Report