Tell Us Your Top Innovators
It’s that time again. To recognize Fortnightly Top Innovators 2024.
Tell us your utility’s top innovators. Individuals making breakthroughs in utility reliability, affordability, safety, and environmental quality. And teams of individuals doing so too.
This year’s Fortnightly Top Innovators event will take place as usual at the historic Willard hotel near the White House. The awards ceremony is scheduled for Tuesday October 8, for the twelve categories of innovation in utility service.
And the Edison Pioneers Innovation of the Year Award as well. Honoring collaboration among companies in innovation.
The event’s opening reception is set for that Sunday evening, October 6. Then, on Monday October 7, there’ll be a full day of conversations onstage with utility innovation leaders. And of course, the grand reception that evening.
As usual for Public Utilities Fortnightly events, they are invite-only, off-the-record, and most importantly, PowerPoint-free. That way we have at our events, meaningful conversations, rather than scripted presentations.
So, start preparing your nominations.
An electric, gas, and water utility, please remember, can submit multiple nominations, and can win the honor in more than one category. That’s what happened last year for individual innovators and teams of innovators from Arizona Public Service, Exelon, and Puget Sound Energy.
The twelve categories of innovation in utility service are as usual:
Edith Clarke Top Innovator in Reliability
Lewis Latimer Top Innovator in Design
George Westinghouse Top Innovator in Leadership
Bertha Lamme Top Innovator in Generation
Charles Steinmetz Top Innovator in Grid Ops
Nancy Fitzroy Top Innovator in Environment & Safety
Maria Telkes Top Innovator in Distributed Energy
Francis Upton Top Innovator in Analytics
William Hammer Top Innovator in Electrification
John Beggs Top Innovator in Energy Transition
Mabel MacFerran Top Innovator in Storage
Florence Fogler Top Innovator in Transmission Tech
In addition, a thirteenth category recognizes and honors the collaboration of companies, involving at least one electric, natural gas, and water utility, working as a team to introduce a significant innovation for the public interest. This is the Edison Pioneers award.
Nominations should address the following questions:
- Who is the individual innovator, or each of the innovators on the team, that you are nominating for Top Innovator?
- What is their title and role at the utility?
- In summary, what was their distinctive and meaningful innovation?
- In greater detail, what was their distinctive and meaningful innovation?
- At what stage is the innovation? That is, in the planning stage, in the pilot stage, in the process of being implemented, or has been implemented over the last year or so?
- What will be the tangible benefit directly or indirectly for the utility's customers?
- What is the potential for other utilities or the utilities industry overall to take advantage of this innovation for the benefit of their customers?
- What are the next steps if any to build upon this innovation?
The deadline for nominations is June 15, 2024. Please feel free to reach out to the Public Utilities Fortnightly team with any questions you may have. Email PUF's Joe Paparello at paparello@fortnightly.com.