After attending the NECA 2026 show in Las Vegas last week, I came away from several of the educational sessions with a short list of some of the hottest topics in the electrical industry right now, including electrification/grid updates, the data center explosion, and implementing artificial intelligence (AI) on electrical construction projects. Since this October print issue is dedicated to infrastructure updates, I thought it would be fitting to explore the theme of grid resilience further.
According to the “2026 State of Grid Resilience,” a report recently conducted by Zpryme on behalf of S&C Electric Company (based on a survey of utility and energy industry professionals across North America), 75% of utility leaders say operational risk has increased in the last five years, while 61% identify affordability and customer rate pressure as the single greatest barrier to accelerating resilience investment. Simply put, the need to upgrade the grid is at odds with the pressure to keep electricity affordable. The utilities obviously recognize this need, but paying for the necessary improvements remains a challenge. In addition, load growth is putting additional pressure on the grid. In fact, 54% of survey respondents say projected load growth will be very or extremely significant for their systems over the next decade, while 82% expect data centers and artificial intelligence to be a leading driver of load growth across the grid.
Several articles in this issue address these challenges from a field level, including “Managing Demand with Renewables and Energy Storage,” by Richard Austin, P.E., and Jeff Mark, P.E., of AEI (on page 48) and “Beyond the Utility Grid: The Rise of Transit Microgrids,” written by Orlando Cruz, P.E., and Supasit Jong, P.E., of CDM Smith (on page 54). But in the cover story (starting on page 36), “Designing and Powering the Future Grid,” Amy Fischbach, head of content for T&D World and freelance writer for EC&M, gives readers a first-hand look into what’s ahead for the energy sector as electrical professionals help utilities modernize the grid. According to Frank Johnson, vice president of energy at ISG in Cleveland, “Increasing power consumption from data centers, electrification initiatives, manufacturing growth, and population expansion is creating a significant backlog of work that will require continued investment in transmission, distribution, substations, and grid reliability projects.” Robert Rugg, president and CEO of Rugg’s Construction Company in Upland, Calif., sums up this bottleneck quite well. “The question is not simply whether enough generation is being proposed, but whether usable power can reach a particular site when it’s needed. Transmission, local distribution capacity, equipment availability, and connection approvals all have to align.”
That’s obviously easier said than done; however, the EC&M audience is certainly making electrification a top priority. According to the results of its 2026 Electrical Design Firms survey and Top 50 Electrical Contractors survey, a growing percentage of electrical revenue is tied to electrification-related projects, such as EV charging, building electrification, grid modernization, battery energy storage, and microgrids. For our engineering respondents, 70% said demand for resiliency-focused electrical system design increased in 2025, followed by 62% of contractor respondents. In addition, 92% of contractor respondents identified data centers as the electrification segment generating the most activity for their company. It will be interesting to watch how this all plays out in the months and years ahead — and you can bet EC&M will be there to report on what transpires and how it will affect our audience.
