DISTRIBUTECH International 2025 in Dallas brought together thousands of energy professionals, innovators, and industry leaders to explore the future of power transmission and distribution.
IQGeo was excited to talk with customers and other innovators about near-term and long-term industry trends.
While the event covered a broad array of topics—from grid modernization to transportation electrification and DERs—the IQGeo team noticed a few themes emerge that signal where the industry is heading: the expansion of artificial intelligence (AI), the evolution of outage response strategies, and advancements in digitizing field workflows such as design and as-builts. These areas are not only interconnected but also critical to building a smarter, more resilient energy grid.
The continued rise of Artificial Intelligence
To no one’s surprise, AI was front and center at DISTRIBUTECH 2025, demonstrating its potential to revolutionize grid management, customer engagement, and field operations. One of the major highlights was how AI can enable utilities to move from reactive maintenance to proactive, data-driven strategies. Other sessions showcased how AI and advanced analytics are transforming grid operations by optimizing distributed energy resource management and enhancing system reliability in real time.
From an IQGeo perspective, the expansion of AI interest and capabilities coincided with the announcement of our planned acquisition of Deepomatic, whose AI-powered computer vision by photo capture technology can be deployed across the network lifecycle to transform field operations. The combined IQGeo-Deepomatic solution transforms network field operations, ensuring tasks are completed correctly and accurately the first time.
Eventually, utilities will be able to build on this foundation to create a predictive, proactive model that identifies and rectifies issues before they cause problems. In addition to predicting impending issues, AI-powered task management will problem-solve for itself and generate tasks for field workers to complete. This will involve ensuring tickets are created for the right crews at the right time with the tools, training and certifications required to resolve the issue, significantly shortening repair times while ensuring tasks are completed right the first time.
Outage response: smarter, faster, more resilient grids
Another central theme at this year’s conference was outage preparedness and response. As extreme weather events become more frequent and severe, utilities are under increasing pressure to respond with speed and precision. DISTRIBUTECH 2025 featured a dedicated track on storms and wildfires, where utility leaders and emergency managers shared insights on building real-time communication systems, coordinating with local agencies, and using AI for early wildfire detection. The overarching message was clear: resiliency isn’t just about infrastructure—it’s about data, foresight, and operational agility. Utilities that invest in smart outage response capabilities today will be better prepared to meet the challenges of tomorrow.
That’s exactly why IQGeo has focused recent efforts on our outage mobility solution to accelerate outage response and damage assessment by giving field crews the geospatial context and network connectivity details to quickly understand outage tickets. What we’ve learned from conversations with customers is that field teams need spatial awareness along with the detailed network model data and native mobility to safely and efficiently respond to unplanned events. For extreme weather, their mobile solution absolutely has to auto-scale to demand and be BYOD-enabled for mutual aid crews.
Field data capture: bridging the digital and physical worlds
The focus on digitization of field operations repeated DISTRIBUTECH theme of recent years. Presentations emphasized how utilities are adopting next-gen tools to capture, analyze, and act on field data more effectively. By integrating operational data with advanced analytics, utilities are turning routine fieldwork into opportunities for strategic decision-making and proactive maintenance. These technologies don’t just make life easier for field crews—they also create ripple effects throughout the organization, improving everything from customer experience to grid performance.
IQGeo has recognized this glaring need in field operations for years. From the outset, we’ve believed in our Native Mobility approach to network management. While most mobile applications used to manage electric grids in the field were created as appendages to their source systems – such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and EAM – we created ours specifically for field use regardless of the work. By designing our solution on a single architecture, we give field users the same functionality and data access as office users.
We ensure that new data, configurations, and code sync automatically to mobile devices, without the need to return to the office for updates or upgrades. And we enable field teams to bidirectionally sync network data, regardless of connectivity. In short, we enable field teams to quickly capture the real-world physical data on network assets and then update the network model in real time, from design to asset inspections to outage response.
Conclusion: A smarter, stronger energy future
DISTRIBUTECH 2025 confirmed what many in the industry already suspected: the energy transition is no longer about possibility—it’s about execution. AI, outage response innovation, and current field data have become foundational pillars for the next-generation utility. As these technologies mature and converge, utilities that embrace them will be better positioned to deliver resilient, reliable service.
If you missed us at DISTRIBUTECH, book a demo to see how IQGeo and Deepomatic can add AI computer vision to improve:
Meter installations
Asset inspections
Damage assessment
At IQGeo, we empower utilities to design, build, and manage the networks of tomorrow with greater efficiency and confidence. Discover how our geospatial network management software is helping industry leaders all over the world overcome challenges and achieve their goals. Visit our customer stories page to learn why they trust IQGeo to drive their success.
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