The following is a transcript of the Aug. 17, 2026, episode of Public Power Now. Learn more about subscribing to Public Power Now at PublicPower.org/Podcasts. Some quotes may have been edited for clarity.
Paul Ciampoli
Welcome to the latest episode of Public Power Now. I'm Paul Ciampoli, APPA's news director.
A growing number of public power utilities are looking to successfully utilize artificial intelligence in their operations.
But utilities don't always know where to start or they need help in navigating the AI arena to figure out the best ways in which to utilize AI.
That's where joint action agencies can play a key role in the AI journey for public power utilities.
In April of this year, Noteworthy AI announced a new program that enables American Municipal Power to offer its more than 130 municipal electric utility members with a program that provides streamlined access to Noteworthy AI's inspection platform through standardized terms and group buy pricing.
Branndon Kelley, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Innovation and Chief Strategy Officer at AMP is here to provide additional details on this program.
Branndon, thanks for joining us on the podcast.
Branndon Kelley
Well, thanks Paul for having me and I'm looking forward to the conversation today.
Paul Ciampoli
Branndon, just to get our conversation started, I wanted to kind of jump right into in terms of the specifics on how AMP members are going to benefit from this program.
Branndon Kelley
Yeah, well, that's a great question.
So at AMP, as you mentioned, we have more than 130 members and those are all shape and sizes.
But the one thing that's in common with all of those is the fact that they need to provide reliable power.
And the health of the distribution system is one of those ways that they ensure that.
So whether you're large or small, you have to make sure that your distribution system is taken care of.
And regardless of your size, that at times is a very labor intense situation. Just even assessing and understanding what the health of your system is.
Even [at a] more basic level, even if you're even smaller, sometimes just knowing what assets are out there, whether they're yours or third party attachments, is very important.
So, we looked at that in general, and we've looked at that over the years and our members, obviously, and our municipal utilities, which our members have struggled with, we look for solutions that can help that.
And, we were fortunate enough to come across a Noteworthy AI and their solution that sort of allowed us to tackle that problem.
So, at the basic level just utilizing AI and utilizing the tools that Noteworthy has, we can drive the system with visual inspection. We capture those images. We can take inventory, a GIS location of all those poles, as well as the assets that are attached to those poles.
And again, with very little labor, doesn't even really take someone that understands what's those poles and what [are] those attachments.
It just takes the equipment on a vehicle that drives those routes. We do it in a way because of our members being all shape and sizes that allows the lowest cost of entry.
So AMP as the joint action agency, we've developed a program that allows them to rent the camera.
The camera is...the largest cost of the initial start of this program.
So we've purchased as the joint action agency cameras that allow our members to rent and then they temporarily can install those on an existing vehicle.
They also, depending on the size, they can contract a third party, including partnerships that we have or even our own staff, depending on the size, can go drive their community and provide or collect that information.
So at the end of the day, we're collecting that information, we're collecting where the poles are with the GPS coordinates, we're taking inventory on that pole, and then we go from there.
We start utilizing the power of the AI of the platform to do things like the health of the transformer, the lean of the pole, any sort of vegetation that might be there, etc.
So our members really start benefiting from this program immediately with the first drive, utilizing not only the fact that we've built this wrapper of a program around that allows us to deliver this technology, but the fact that the tool itself has such powerful insights and immediate information that can allow them to start taking action to better manage and make their system more reliable.
Paul Ciampoli
And I would imagine that as this program has progressed or will progress, that there would be some even informal kind of lessons learned or best practices among AMP members in terms of how things are being utilized.
Branndon Kelley
Yeah, absolutely.
So the technology that we're using, every one of our members could take and pursue that on an individual scale, independent action, if you will.
We utilize the power of joint action because one, we can drive down the cost. So we're bringing the amount of poles in the program at a much higher quantity. So we look like a much larger utility.
So every member immediately benefits from the economies of scale.
But to your point, we can take sort of the lessons learned and more importantly, the insights that we acquire and sort of apply those, you know, in real time as the program grows and then over the history of the program.
The idea of this program isn't a one-time sort of you run your system, you collect your information, you make your decisions.
The power of this program is the ability to do that continuous and monitor, whether it's every month, every week, or in many cases for our smaller utilities, once, twice a year.
It's being able to have that information, benchmark it, use this. The system itself will provide that insight.
The overall program wrapper that we put on the program will allow AMP to utilize that to help make decisions, provide information.
One of the things I haven't even mentioned yet, and it's really going to be powerful with this as we collect more and more of our members in this program is the ability to do storm recovery as well.
Paul Ciampoli
Now, I think you've touched upon this to some degree already, but any kind of specific examples of how AMP members have utilized the program since it was announced in April?
Branndon Kelley
Yes, so we've announced the program in April and upon announcement we ordered the equipment, so we just started driving communities in June.
So we're just over probably about two months into the program.
We are seeing immediate information where people are finding -- one of the biggest areas is third party attachments that they weren't aware of.
So, there's a safety concern there. There's a revenue potential concern there.
There's just an understanding of what's out there on your poles that, you know, just from an informational perspective. We're seeing that information collected as well as the health and well-being of the system.
So we have communities that [are] already detecting...transformer corrosion, split poles or damaged poles, et cetera.
So we are very excited. We have our first few members that have joined the program. We have another handful that are immediately joining.
And I should note, it's not just the smallest of the small. We have some of our largest members that are on the cusp of joining the program. We're just at the point of getting contracts executed now.
We're really excited for what this looks like a year from now. It's really allowing us to take what's been the hype of AI in the utility space.
And when you're a huge, large utility and you can build dedicated teams to focus on how to integrate and implement AI solutions in your utility, I won't say it's easy, but it is much easier than sort of when you're a small utility like our typical member.
This allows us to sort of get past the hype and really implement these solutions in place.
And instead of this idea of you'll eventually see the return on investment, our members -- even the ones that are already in the program -- are immediately seeing the value of this program. It's very exciting for us.
And it's one of these programs that's unique, that's sort of these immediate results and sort of the power of this is sort of allowing us to see the growth in this program relatively quickly.
So we're very excited and we are anxiously awaiting to really start sharing our results back as a whole to our board and our membership as well over the next year.
Paul Ciampoli
Yeah, one thing that strikes me about AI in terms of where we are today as a society is that the nature of AI is that it's not a static thing, right? It's an ongoing kind of back and forth in terms of learning with industries.
And so I think to your point, what's exciting about this is that a year from now, that seems kind of far away, but I mean, between now and then, there's going to be a lot of learning that's been done as the program rolls out.
Branndon Kelley
Absolutely.
Paul Ciampoli
Just curious, in terms of the AMP and communicating with members about this, could you describe the process in terms of how AMP has talked to members about the availability of this?
Branndon Kelley
So we have a very rigorous, what we call program analysis process at AMP. I was sort of the person, four or five years ago that spearheaded creating that.
And so, there's no shortage of technologies or ideas that sort of get created that potentially could be offerings to our members.
What we do is a much more disciplined approach to one, we examine the market to make sure that there is actually a need.
We obviously examine the technology and many times multiple technology partners or even if it's not technology, multiple partners to make sure that we're picking the right one.
And then, we sort of put it through your standard business case as if we were building this on the side as an independent business -- again, a market analysis, cost benefit analysis.
Does it make sense for us to develop a program or not? Is there something commercially available that we could just point members to?
Is there something commercially available we could white label? Do we need to put a wrapper around it, et cetera? So we go through that whole process.
That whole process is just inherently engaging our members through it, right?
By reaching out to members, talking to our members about it, engaging with our board on a monthly basis to let them know.
And our board is made up of 22 of our members and another handful or so of members that sit on committee.
So there, we have a good percentage of our members already engaged hearing about this on a monthly.
We do, you know, through the process of deciding before that launch of April, you know, we're talking to members, we're introducing this to members, we're doing a roadshow, if you will.
And we're getting the feedback that the program is.
That sort of collides with the fact of doing this program analysis, which comes to the point where it's financially viable. It makes sense.
We've negotiated the appropriate contracts, cost savings, cost effectiveness with the vendor.
We sort of put that all together. We present that first to our leadership team.
And our leadership team blesses it, pokes a lot of holes in it, asks a lot of questions. We take full transparency on everything. We take that to our board. We do the same thing with that. The board pokes a lot of holes in it, ask a lot of questions. We get it tightened up and then we get the launch of the program...all that process I just mentioned to you was well over a year, well over a year of development.
And then in February, I think around the February time frame, our board sort of gave us the blessing to move forward.
We tightened up the contracts, we executed them, got us to April...and then we have a team of folks, our member relations team that's out there talking to our members. They get educated on the program.
They're talking to our members about the program and -- not necessarily tactically saying this is what the program is because there's a website that could do that -- but specifically talking about what the value is to that individual member at AMP and what the value as the joint action approach to this is.
So that member relationship team's doing that, we include it, we're doing webinars, I think I've already mentioned, we're putting out press releases. We're putting it out in our weekly newsletters.
We immediately start taking calls from our members that are interested. We try to get as where we're at now, one or two, three or four pilot members. We call them pilot members, initial members, if you will, into the program.
So we can start building use cases. We'll build case studies and then, you know, continue sharing it. It's really that whole process.
It's a very formal quantitative process that happens with analysis as well as a qualitative process of just that relationship building and the sharing of the value to the membership that sort of allows this program to grow over time and be very successful.
And then we're very diligent on the transparency on a monthly basis showing who's in the program.
We'd like to hit this number of poles. By this time we have a contractual obligation to get so many poles in the program by the end of the contract to maintain the pricing throughout, and just continuously reporting those types of information back to the board and our leadership team, and then continuing to share this, the value story out to membership.
So I know like, for example, at the end of this month, it will be a topic of our Focus 4 group.
And our Focus 4 group's a group of members, anyone can join where we talk about sort of the new trending topics, you know, of the day. That's sort of it disrupting or integrating themselves within our utilities of our members.
Paul Ciampoli
And so now you mentioned a rough time frame in terms of kind of where things would be at a year from now.
Against that backdrop, does AMP have benchmarks with respect to the goals it hopes to achieve for its members with the AI program?
Branndon Kelley
I don't know that we have, we've established, because every single member is different. Some members have very tight inventories where they understand every pole they have and every asset they have.
So the inventory piece of this, other than potentially third party, isn't as important to them.
They're truly taking this on...for asset inspection, health of their system.
Other systems historically are smaller systems, they don't necessarily have a complete inventory or their inventory has been dated. They don't have the GIS technology.
If you don't have a GIS system, at the minimum, at the end of one drive-by of your total system, you will have the GPS location of every single one of your poles and then what assets exist on those poles that you can put into any sort of GIS system. Part of the value of the AMP program is we will assist that.
And if you don't have a GIS system, which many of our utilities don't because of their size, we will maintain that data for you outside of Noteworthy.
So if you make a decision later that you don't want to use the Noteworthy program or the Noteworthy program proves to not be valuable, we don't anticipate that, we at the minimum maintain that information.
So from a benchmarking perspective -- obviously, we have a fiduciary responsibility to our members and our organization.
It's to make sure that the program covers fee of service. That's probably your most basic.
The other one is we have some contractual obligations with Noteworthy to hit a number of poles.
And poles is sort of the mechanism that they use this program.
Like in our AMI program, the mechanism is meters. In this program, it's poles. So we have a contractual obligation with Noteworthy to meet a certain number of poles.
To get there, we have some benchmarks through the next three years, if you will, of where we would like to get to. It's looking very promising.
And then I guess the final sort of benchmark we is sort of that quantitative member satisfaction.
You know, they're finding value, they're coming back to us and saying this system, you know, allowed us to find pole top attachments we didn't know about it.
This system allowed us to build a maintenance plan over the next three to five years to replace poles or transformers, et cetera.
So that would be the limit of, I guess, what our current benchmarking is.
I guess to close next question, it would just be, to be determined, as the program matures and more poles get in and we learn more, we learn more at AMP about opportunities.
Our members that are using the program learn more, I could see potential other benchmarks and KPIs that we would want to track.
Paul Ciampoli
So now you mentioned, correct me if I misheard you, but you said if you're an AMP member that doesn't have a GIS system, this program can work around that, right?
Branndon Kelley
That's right.
Paul Ciampoli
And I would imagine that that's a really attractive element. Obviously, if you don't have a GIS system, that's a kind of a major obstacle that's removed.
Branndon Kelley
That's right.
So at the basic level when you are utilizing this system, you are going to have a GIS map within the system, you are going to have access to that data, that layer, if you will, of data.
AMP -- part of our wrapper of the program is we are going to collect that data and we are going to store that data long term for you.
We're not at this point hosting a GIS system, though, you know, I don't want to say for sure, but there's always possibilities for opportunities for programs here at AMP.
This is not going to be a hosted GIS separate of the Noteworthy, but we are going to maintain that data.
Therefore, if the individual community makes the decision that they no longer want to use Noteworthy or the Noteworthy program for unforeseen reason doesn't exist, that information will be maintained and at the minimal that value will continue to stay with the member as of the date that the system was last driven and the data was last collected.
Paul Ciampoli
Now we've talked a lot obviously in detail in terms of AMP and its members in relation to this program and you've mentioned Noteworthy AI. So I want to give you an opportunity at this point to talk about why AMP decided to partner with Noteworthy AI.
Branndon Kelley
It's interesting. I've been at AMP for just about 17 years, actually about 17 years this week.
Hhow we find out about technology comes all different ways.
In this one in particular...Noteworthy was introduced to us through another partner that was investing in this, you know, an investor-owned utility partner that was investing in this as part of their innovation fund, and we met with those individuals over the phone, through sort of a webinar, if you will.
We've had an innovation team at AMP for a number of years where we've examined technologies. And then about three years ago, we created an AI advisory council...of course, you had to have one because it's such a buzzword and it's such sort of rippling through the industry, we had to have a response to that.
And we were looking at ways to integrate AI and we looked at generative AI and we'd done a lot of stuff with that.
And it was like, what sort of technology out there can we put in the operations that actually is sort of ease of entry and can immediately return value and all sort of married up. So we had these objectives with our AI advisory council and our innovation team.
We were introduced to this technology at a conference more or less, and we had a meeting with them.
I cannot say enough good things about the onboarding process with Noteworthy. They met us where they needed to. They came out, they went and drove one of our small communities as a pilot...this is all sort of sales support, no cost.
We immediately could see what the power of this was because...a few of the folks that work for me sat in the vehicle while the car was being driven and the data was being collected in real time and they were watching it on the laptop and they were seeing the results.
And then all through the way of how our members need to be served, how our programs need to be developed.
Noteworthy was there next to us adjusting putting things in the format, not in the format of the document, but in the way that we need the programs to work and the way we need the pricing structure to work. They were very willing to work with us.
So we sort of chose Noteworthy because it was put in front of us. We did the examination.
And then as soon as we got through all the sort of stuff I just mentioned, we put it in our formal process or program analysis.
So we chose them because they were quickly, I guess to summarize, they were quickly able to demonstrate value to us.
Meaning within a few weeks of us finding the technology, having the initial call, they were on site, we drove to a community, we collected the data, we've seen the immediate results, and then we saw a pricing structure that we could put a program around that our members would get more value out of every dollar that was spent.
Paul Ciampoli
You mentioned an investor-owned utility at the start of your answer in terms of how you, correct me if I'm wrong, but in terms of initial awareness of the company?
Branndon Kelley
Yes.
Paul Ciampoli
So one of the themes that I have consistently with this podcast is knowledge sharing among public power utilities is key, but I guess this is a good example of how there are times when public power entities or utilities can learn or get tips from co-ops or IOUs.
So last question I had for you, Branndon, was what advice would AMP give to other joint action agencies considering a similar move to offer an AI program to their members?
Branndon Kelley
Well, you know, first off, and I'm sure every joint action agency that is looking at these, they understand their members.
And so obviously [what's] key most is understand your members, understand what their existing problems are, their appetites, before you ever go and look at technologies or start being introduced to technologies that you may be developing a program around.
One of the things is we found such value in this program early on and in addition to being the Chief Strategy Officer at American Municipal Power, AMP is an owner of Hometown Connections. I am the board chair. I became the board chair in January.
As we were developing this program and as the program was...launched in April, I encouraged the CEO of Hometown Connections, Marc Gerken, to reach out to Hometown Connections and build a partnership there.
So one of those things to answer your question, what advice is to look towards places where other joint actions has already had success.
And so, while it's the infancy of our program, we're already seeing immediate success.
The other part I would say to develop an AI program or any program is take it through a rigorous analysis.
As I mentioned, we have a program analysis. It is very rigorous. It's very transparent.
We put it in front of internal resources, we get partnership of our members externally and as well as our board, which is sort of that hybrid of internal, external.
Specifically AI, it's like you got to get past the hype.
I don't necessarily have any examples in the public power space, but I have examples across industry in general.
A lot of money is being spent on trying to figure out what companies can do with AI.
We as public power, specifically joint action, who have the fiduciary responsibility of our members and their money, the money they pay us, we have to make sure that we're not chasing hype.
And so, when you're looking at AI programs or technologies or things where you're trying to introduce AI, where you think you're going to get business value out of them -- look at those ones that can show you sort of either an immediate return on investment or you can actually see the return on investment, meaning it's within arm's reach, like you can actually get there.
And maybe more importantly or just as importantly as a return on dollar investment is that return in value. All of those things rang true with us with Noteworthy. So that would be my recommendation.
Obviously, tactically, you’ve got to have a good technical team to vet the technology and make sure it's cybersecurity.
AI introduces a lot of those issues.
So you have to make sure that your organization has that level of expertise to make sure that they're vetting that.
Some of that can be done by utilizing technologies or programs that already exist or other joint action agencies have done. In this case, it hadn't.
So we had to do some additional due diligence.
Today, as I mentioned, they are a partner of Hometown Connections.
So, you know, there is some reassurance there that it's been vetted and there is some preferential pricing, et cetera.
Paul Ciampoli
And sorry, you mentioned Marc Gerken, who's the president and CEO of Hometown Connections.
Could you elaborate on in terms of how he's been involved with us a little bit more?
Branndon Kelley
His involvement is in his role. So I'm the board chair and his role as the CEO.
One of the things we do at Hometown Connections is we have five owners and we have a number of affiliates across the country as we encourage them as they're finding technologies and solutions to bring those up and get them into the organization and if they make sense, have Hometown Connections pursue a partnership, right?
Obviously at the basic level to get economies of scale, preferential pricing, if you will, but also to vet them out and make sure that there is some advantageous reason that public power entities would want to do business with them, sort of do that examination.
So Marc's involvement of the development of everything I mentioned really didn't exist.
Once AMP had a program and we're headed to the program, it was really one part of that, hey, you should bring ideas to the table.
I brought the idea to the table and I said, this, I believe, is going to be an idea that public power as a whole is going to benefit a lot from -- Hometown Connections should reach out and develop a relationship there to help get some of this preferential pricing...there's joint action agencies of all sizes and there's utilities of all sizes that are going to potentially take individual action.
You know, utilizing the Hometown Connections, Marc was able to work an agreement between him and Hometown Connections that sort of delivers some of those economies of scale to everyone, even outside of the AMP membership.
Paul Ciampoli
The focus of the interview has been about how AMP is working with its members.
But taken from an individual utility level, let's say you're a public power utility in California that's not working with a joint action agency or a state association, there could be some lessons learned in terms of how this program progresses.
Branndon Kelley
Oh, absolutely, because at the end of the day on the AMP program...we're a collection of 130 plus municipal utilities, and there'll be whatever number of those, the subset of those that participate in this program, every one of those in this program...they operate as their own individual utility.
And then AMP just has access to the aggregated data, which I didn't even mention, which really one of the most powerful things there, if you can get to that sort of mass of participation is, things like mutual aid.
So every one of those utilities with an AMP, they're going to operate as their own utility, they're going to collect this data, they're going to learn lessons.
The model itself, like any AI model, the more it's used, the more it's driven, the more it's told it's wrong or it's right when it collects data and makes determinations, the smarter the model gets.
So inherently, every time a car passes through a community, in theory, the model should get better.
So everyone's going to benefit by the usage, by the more usage of this. Just the nature or the foundational component of AI.
The other part is, more and more utilities are using this, there'll be more and more information shared. We will be sharing information across our utility.
I already mentioned Hometown. I don't want to beat that to death, but between the Hometown owners and we're not the only Hometown owner that's pursuing this technology. There's another joint action agency as well.
We'll be sharing that information between those and just the nature of public power is sharing the information and the lessons learned.
So I think inherently, if there's someone out in California that's going to take independent action, whether it's L.A. or a small utility out there, depending on the size, they'll be able to benefit from those lessons learned.
Things like, hey...and I'm sort of spitballing here -- but hey, this transformer was detected this way, but the reality of it is it's the angle, so you need to approach that data somewhere else.
Or the fact that, hey, you know, one of the biggest things is if you're a large system and you have 90,000 poles, maybe running your whole system, you know, driving your whole system in one week is not the best idea because you're going to be inundated with information that you have to go hunt down and make sure that some sort of response doesn't need to be needed.
So things, all kinds of things like that, I think will be bubbled up out of this and will be shared across that.
And again, not to be repetitive, I just think that the nature of public power and information sharing, whether it's through the APPA, whether it's through Hometown Connections or just peer-to-peer direct sharing, you know, those lessons will be shared throughout.
Paul Ciampoli
This has been a really interesting conversation, Branndon, and I would love to have another conversation with you perhaps around a year from now where we could kind of take stock of how the program has benefited AMP and its members, if you'd be open to that.
Branndon Kelley
Absolutely and agreed that, a year from now, we should be able to share some real statistics on things that's been found, things that's been resolved, and maybe even quantify value that's been delivered, not just a qualitative value that's been delivered, not just quantitative.
Paul Ciampoli
Well, thanks again, Branndon, for taking the time out of your day to speak with us.
Branndon Kelley
Yep, thank you.
Paul Ciampoli
Thanks for listening to this episode of Public Power Now, which is produced by Julio Guerrero, graphic and digital designer at APPA.
I'm Paul Ciampoli and we'll be back with more from the world of public power next week.
