2026 Rate Design Conference

As utilities respond to changing customer needs, rapid load growth, affordability pressures, and new policy priorities, rate design is becoming increasingly complex. Traditional regulatory and pricing approaches are evolving alongside new incentive frameworks, more dynamic rate structures, and changing expectations for how costs and risks should be shared among utilities and customers.

The 2026 Rate Design Conference will bring together utility, regulatory, consumer, and industry perspectives to examine how these changes are playing out in practice. Through comparative regulatory discussions and current utility case studies, the program will explore incentive regulation models, dynamic and time-varying pricing, and the growing challenges surrounding large loads and customer affordability.

Attendees will hear how different jurisdictions and utilities are approaching formula rates, multi-year rate plans, hourly and real-time pricing, time-of-use structures, and emerging large-load considerations, while examining the lessons these experiences offer for the future of utility rate design.

• Compare regulatory and incentive-based approaches, including formula rates and multi-year rate plans, across different jurisdictions.
• Evaluate lessons learned from utility implementation of hourly, real-time, dynamic, and time-of-use pricing structures.
• Examine how evolving rate structures can respond to changing customer behavior, system needs, and regulatory priorities.
• Discuss the rate design and cost-allocation implications of data centers and other rapidly growing large loads.
• Assess approaches for addressing customer affordability while maintaining utility financial stability, reliability, and needed system investment.
• Identify regulatory priorities and emerging issues likely to influence the next generation of utility rate design.

The speaker roster is currently being finalized. The program is being developed to include perspectives from organizations and jurisdictions such as:

• Ameren
• PG&E
• Southern California Edison (SCE)
• Georgia Power and/or Georgia regulatory perspectives
• Illinois utility and regulatory perspectives
• Minnesota utility and regulatory perspectives
• Northeastern U.S. and/or Canadian utilities and regulators
• California regulatory and consumer perspectives

• Regulatory Models / Incentive Regulation: Formula rates, multi-year rate plans, other incentive-regulation approaches, and a comparative discussion of how different models are working in practice.
• Dynamic Pricing / Hourly Pricing / TOU Pricing: Utility case studies exploring hourly pricing, real-time pricing, dynamic pricing, time-of-use structures, implementation experience, and customer considerations.
• Large Loads and Affordability: Rate design challenges created by major new loads, including data centers, alongside affordability, cost allocation, and related regulatory priorities.