Electricity planning is at an inflection point. Electrification, distributed energy resources, large new loads, digitalization, and decarbonization are transforming how energy is generated, delivered, and consumed. These changes increasingly connect decisions that have historically been made through separate generation, transmission, distribution, customer, and fuel-system planning processes.
In light of the evolving landscape, I recently had the opportunity to serve as a Guest Editor for the IEEE Power & Energy Magazine, “Integrated System Planning—Aligning the Energy System for a New Era” (July/August 2026). This special issue examines what this changing environment means for utilities, regulators, planners, technology providers, and customers. I’d like to thank the other Guest Editors Debbie Lew and Bryan Palmintier for our collaboration on the guest editorial.
Why Integrated Planning Matters Now
Traditional planning processes developed around distinct engineering and institutional responsibilities. Generation planners evaluated resource portfolios. Transmission planners assessed network reliability and expansion. Distribution planners forecast local demand and designed infrastructure upgrades. Customer programs, rates, gas infrastructure, and distributed resources frequently followed their own analytical and regulatory pathways.
Those distinctions remain important, but the decisions are no longer independent. For example:
Integrated planning seeks to make these interactions visible before investment decisions are made.
For more on this topic, I also coauthored the featured article “Breaking the Silos: Integrated Planning for the Future Power Grid,” together with Rick Wallace Kenyon, Jacob Kravits, Ken Aramaki, Obadiah Bartholomy, and EPE’s Steven Bye.
More Coordination, Not Necessarily One Model
Integrated planning is sometimes interpreted as a single model that optimizes every element of the energy system. The special issue presents a more practical and nuanced view.
Integration can include:
- Shared forecasts and scenarios across planning teams
- Coordinated planning timelines and decision points
- Consistent data definitions and interoperable tools
- Iterative exchanges among specialized models
- Joint evaluation of infrastructure and non-wires alternatives
- Feedback between long-term planning and actual grid operations
- Regulatory processes that recognize benefits spanning multiple domains
Specialized planning tools and teams will continue to be needed. The objective is not to eliminate every boundary but to create coordination mechanisms that allow information and system value to move across those boundaries.
Making Flexibility a Planning Resource
EPE is also represented in the issue through Cody Davis, a coauthor of “Demystifying Grid Flexibility.” The article examines how distributed energy resources (DERs) and responsive demand can be treated as active system resources rather than simply as adjustments to forecasted load.
This distinction is increasingly important. Flexible resources may provide capacity, reduce peaks, relieve local constraints, respond to changing operating conditions, and help defer infrastructure investments. Capturing that value requires more than identifying the technical potential of DERs. Utilities also need methods for determining where flexibility is needed, how it should be valued, how performance can be measured, and how customer, market, and regulatory structures can support dependable participation.
The article also reinforces a central theme of the special issue: flexibility sits at the intersection of planning and operations. Planners must be able to represent the expected availability and value of flexible resources, while operators need the visibility and control capabilities required to use them under actual system conditions. Closing that loop is essential if flexibility is to become a dependable part of future grid investment and operating strategies.
Flexibility Connects Planning and Operations
One of the issue’s recurring themes is the changing role of flexibility.
Distributed energy resources, energy storage, responsive demand, dynamic operating limits, and other flexible solutions can help utilities make better use of existing infrastructure. They may defer traditional investments, bridge the gap between a near-term customer need and a longer infrastructure construction timeline, or provide ongoing operational support.
Unlike many traditional infrastructure solutions, however, flexibility cannot simply be installed and forgotten. Its value depends on availability, control, customer behavior, operating conditions, and coordination with other grid resources.
As flexibility becomes more important, planning must become more operationally aware—and operations must become more forward-looking. Planning models need information about how flexible resources perform in practice. Operators need visibility into the resources and capabilities that planners expect to rely upon in the future.
The grid that is planned must ultimately be operable. To learn more, visit my March 2026 blog, “Planning the Grid We’ll Actually Operate.”
Coordinating Electric and Gas Infrastructure
Integrated planning must also extend beyond the boundaries of the electric system. The transition from fossil-fuel end uses to electricity directly links the future of gas infrastructure with the timing, location, and scale of electric-system investment.
The article “Integrated Energy Planning” examines how Eversource is addressing this challenge in Massachusetts. Rather than planning gas and electric systems independently, the company is developing processes that evaluate gas, electric, and decarbonization investments together. This includes assessing non-pipeline alternatives, coordinating long-term infrastructure plans, and identifying locations where targeted electrification may allow gas investments to be deferred or avoided.
The distinction between broad and targeted electrification is particularly important. If customer electrification occurs gradually and evenly across a service territory, a utility may need to maintain most of its gas network while simultaneously expanding the electric grid. This can increase the combined cost of serving customers across both systems. A geographically targeted approach may create opportunities to retire selected gas infrastructure while concentrating electric upgrades where they are most needed.
The article also illustrates why integrated planning must account for more than engineering feasibility. Decisions must consider customer participation, timing, reliability, affordability, and the distribution of costs and benefits among customers who electrify and those who remain on the gas system. Eversource’s framework therefore includes electric-system reviews, gas-system assessments, benefit-cost analysis, and stakeholder engagement.
This whole-system perspective reflects one of the central messages of the special issue: decarbonization strategies cannot be planned effectively by optimizing each infrastructure system in isolation. Coordinating investments across electric and gas systems can help utilities identify where conventional upgrades remain necessary, where alternatives may be viable, and how the transition can proceed without shifting disproportionate costs to customers.
From Technical Integration to Institutional Change
The analytical challenges are substantial, but integrated planning is not solely a modeling problem.
Utilities must also align teams, governance, data ownership, investment processes, and regulatory filings. Regulators may oversee different parts of the energy system through separate proceedings and timelines. Multiple utilities, system operators, aggregators, developers, and public agencies may each hold a portion of the information required to understand a system-level decision.
Progress therefore depends on institutional coordination as much as technical innovation.
Utilities can begin without waiting for a complete transformation. Practical first steps include reconciling forecasts, establishing common scenarios, creating formal handoffs between planning groups, comparing planning and operational network models, and developing repeatable processes for evaluating both infrastructure and flexible alternatives.
An Industry Conversation That Must Continue
The articles in this special issue examine integrated planning through complementary perspectives, including grid flexibility, gas-electric coordination, resilience, software architecture, organizational integration, and generation-transmission-distribution-DER co-optimization.
Together, they show that integrated planning is not a one-time study or a fixed destination. It is an evolving discipline built on better coordination, stronger analytical capabilities, and continuous feedback among the organizations responsible for planning and operating the energy system.
For EPE, this work is closely aligned with our commitment to helping clients connect long-term strategy, detailed grid analysis, operational realities, and implementable investment decisions. You can hear some of these conversations in our podcast “The Switch.”
As the system changes, the industry must move beyond producing individually sound plans for separate parts of the grid. The next step is ensuring those plans work together as one energy system.
