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The Utility of the Future: A Briefing on the Future of Energy and Communications in our Community

Three forces are shaping future quality of life and economic opportunity for the next 30 years. Globalization, technological innovation, and climate change. The energy and communications industries converging is response to rapid technological innovation and will accelerate due to climate change. Jim Ingraham, EPB VP Strategic Research, will discuss the economic forces shaping the utility of the future and the opportunities they offer Chattanooga.

About the Speaker:

Jim Ingraham is Vice President of Strategic Research for EPB, a Municipal Electric Distribution Company and Internet, Cable TV, and Telephone service provider to 350,000 people in a 600 square mile service area covering 9 counties in East Tennessee and North Georgia.

Mr. Ingraham joined EPB in 2005 after a 12-year career with the Tennessee Valley Authority. At EPB his first assignment was to lead the planning effort to design a new business model to finance modernization of EPB’s 70-year old electric distribution system while concurrently building a Fiber-to-the-Home communications network owned by the electric system to generate new revenue and improve economic opportunity for customers. The plan was approved and financed with a $228 million revenue bond offer in 2009. In 2010 he lead the EPB effort to secure a $111 million grant under the American Recovery Act’s DOE Smart Grid Investment Grant Program which accelerated the planned smart grid and fiber-to-the-home network deployment from 10 years to completion in 3 years.

For the last 12 years he has led EPB’s Strategic Research Group. An organization built to gather business intelligence on the emerging energy and communications market space. Build economic models to measure the investment quality and customer value of new technology. Working in close cooperation with partners like DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, The National Science Foundations, The Rocky Mountain Institute, EPRI, University Researchers, and equipment vendors his team works to discover the economic formula for new technologies required to build a next generation modern grid. A new electric grid based on integrated renewable and gas fired generation, energy storage, Internet-of-Things connected customer appliances, artificial intelligence based control systems, next generation sensor technology, advanced cyber security protection, integrated electric/autonomous vehicles, virtual and augmented reality technology, and smart city wireless broadband services.