[Energy Central PowerSession Recap]: Streamlining Processes & Ensuring Compliance in an Era of Energy Transition

This live panel brought together generation, compliance, and operations leaders for a wide-ranging discussion on what is actually changing in the field — and where teams are still getting stuck.

Amit Patel, Erin Westberg, and Steve Turner covered the real challenges of managing outages across diverse and growing fleets, what it takes to stay compliant with GADS and NERC requirements as renewable capacity scales, and where AI fits in without creating new risk.

The conversation was moderated by Mike Smith.

Watch the full recording, or read below for key takeaways from the session.

Amit Patel, Managing Partner @ Integ Consulting
Amit leads utility AI and compliance solutions across North America. With over 25 years in power generation analytics, he helps plants operationalize AI securely—transforming reporting, forecasting, and compliance.

Erin Westberg, Manager of Cost & Growth @NextEra Energy
Erin has over two decades of energy and water experience spanning engineering, operations, and power generation. At NextEra she leads solar and storage project transitions from construction through operations, and successfully onboarded over 7 gigawatts of renewable infrastructure in 2025.

Steve Turner, Consulting Engineer @ Sargent & Lundy
Steve brings deep expertise in system protection for fossil and renewable generation. He previously oversaw protection engineering at Arizona Public Service, and currently chairs IEEE working groups on condition monitoring of synchronous generators.

Before you get into the summary…

The energy transition is changing the planning environment. More asset types, more data streams, and more operating constraints mean outages can no longer rely on tribal knowledge and disconnected tools.

A fossil unit has one generator to track. A solar site may have a hundred inverters. A wind portfolio may span dozens of states. Each requires different monitoring, different cause code logic, and a different relationship with ISOs.

Erin Westberg noted that renewables allow shorter, more flexible outage windows. But that flexibility comes with distributed complexity that traditional outage planning was never designed to handle.

Renewables can open new opportunities, like work windows that are different from thermal schedules, but they also create a more distributed operating reality.

Erin highlighted that at scale you are dealing with many components, many signals, and fast changing priorities, which forces tighter planning discipline and faster updates to outage models.

Amit walked through why manual compliance workflows crack as renewable fleets grow.

When a plant has hundreds of components, you cannot rely on spreadsheet driven logic to catch every outage and build a consistent trail.

He described how teams are using historian data, SCADA inputs, thresholds, and event logic to detect outages, support cause coding, and generate NERC events with audit ready traceability

If you work at a power generator, utility, or IPP, book a short demo with Integ to see how teams are improving GADS accuracy and reducing manual effort.

Qualified power generation professionals receive a $200 gift card.

Erin emphasized a mindset that keeps teams out of trouble.

Trust but verify.

Even with strong automation, reporting holds up only when validation, training, and documentation are built into the process.

What helps most:

Steve shared examples of monitoring that can turn unknowns into planned work.

These are not magic fixes, but they can provide earlier warning, reduce unplanned scope, and improve the quality of outage decisions.

Amit also touched on why outages get expensive inside the organization.

Siloed teams and duplicate entry create delays, confusion, and last minute firefighting. Integrated workflows connect engineering, operations, asset management, and market constraints so decisions move faster and changes are visible sooner.

Bottom line: Outage excellence and compliance in an era of energy transition is less about new tools and more about scalable fundamentals.

Integrated processes, Reliable data and validation, Automation where volume makes manual work unsafe

Teams that strengthen these now will spend less time chasing issues and more time delivering predictable outages.

If you work at a power generator, utility, or IPP, book a short demo with Integ to see how teams are improving GADS accuracy and reducing manual effort.

Qualified power generation professionals receive a $200 gift card.

⭐AI Workshop: Plan, Build & Integrate Energy Solutions 10x Faster with DOTA AI -Mar 11, 10 AM PDT/ 1 PM ET

Got an ops workflow that is stuck in spreadsheets? A reporting task that eats up your week? Or an integration request that keeps bouncing between teams?

Join this live workshop where we will experts at Integ will show how utility and energy teams use DOTA AI to plan, build, and integrate working solutions faster, from dashboards and reports to mid sized apps, including integrations with SCADA, OMS, AMI, and ERP.

You will also get a live end to end demo, Q&A, plus a 30 minute networking session. Registration approval required.

Want to talk to Integ?
If you work in generation, outage management, or compliance and want to reduce manual effort while improving audit readiness, reply to this email and we will share a couple of easy options to connect.

You can also drop a line to Adam Shaw, CMO @Integ - [email protected]

Thanks for reading, here are some more grid technology resources for you to check out:

👉 Watch the whole event here.
👉 Join the next free AI Workshop on March 11
👉 Find more grid technology panels, meet-ups, and events here.
👉 Register for our upcoming networking coffee chat here.

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