[Ephrata, WA / Jacksonville, FL – February 18, 2026] – The Energy Authority (TEA) and the Public Utility District No. 2 of Grant County, WA (Grant PUD) announced today that TEA’s Board of Directors and Grant PUD’s Commission have approved Grant PUD’s Membership in TEA, deepening the organizations’ strategic relationship and expanding TEA’s Member footprint to be nationwide.
As a Member of TEA, Grant PUD will have access to TEA’s full suite of services, including energy trading and risk management, portfolio management, advanced analytics, and advisory solutions.
Grant PUD will become TEA’s seventh Member on April 1, 2026, strengthening TEA’s public power membership base and aligning TEA’s Membership with its national client footprint. Grant PUD joins TEA’s existing Members: American Municipal Power, Inc.; City Utilities of Springfield, Missouri; Grand River Dam Authority; JEA; Nebraska Public Power District; and the South Carolina Public Service Authority (Santee Cooper).
Grant PUD first partnered with TEA in 2025, and the relationship quickly demonstrated the value of TEA’s services and experience. In a short time, Grant PUD saw the additional strategic advantages that Membership brings —deeper alignment, long-term stability, and a direct role in shaping TEA’s future—leading to the decision to join TEA as a Member.
“TEA has proven to be a trusted partner and regional leader as the West undergoes significant market evolution,” said John Mertlich, General Manager & CEO of Grant PUD. “Becoming a Member is a natural next step. It formalizes our long-term alignment and ensures Grant PUD and TEA work together to take advantage of the changing market landscape in the region. Being a Member of TEA also ensures that Grant PUD has a strong voice in TEA’s strategic direction as we work together to manage risk, capture value, and serve our customers with reliability and affordability.”
Grant PUD is well-known for its leadership in regional and national public power initiatives, including its role in the Large Public Power Council (LPPC) and its forward-thinking approach to navigating market transformation in the West.
“TEA is honored to welcome Grant PUD as our newest Member,” said Joanie Teofilo, President & CEO of The Energy Authority. “Grant PUD has long been recognized for its leadership, both in the Pacific Northwest and across the industry. Their decision to become a Member of TEA reflects a shared commitment to public power values, strategic growth, and building long-term strength through collaboration. We are thrilled to welcome Grant PUD as our seventh Member.”
“On behalf of the TEA Board, we are very pleased to welcome Grant PUD to Membership in TEA,” said Jimmy Staton, Chair of TEA’s Board of Directors. “As the nation’s leader in serving public power, it is important that TEA’s Membership reflects the breadth of our nationwide client footprint. Grant PUD is widely recognized as a leader in public power and an important force in the Western energy market landscape. Their perspective will strengthen the TEA Board and enhance our ability to serve public power across the country.”
About Grant County Public Utility District
Grant PUD, a public utility providing power and fiber service for Grant County, Washington, was founded in 1938 by local residents who envisioned affordable electricity for the entire county. Today, Grant PUD realizes that vision with a generation portfolio of more than 2,100 megawatts of clean, renewable, reliable energy, and by delivering power at some of the most affordable rates in the country. To learn more, visit www.grantpud.org.
About The Energy Authority
TEA provides public power with access to advanced resources and technology for responding competitively in the ever-changing energy markets. As a national energy trading and risk management firm, TEA not only provides public power entities with a strategic perspective on deriving maximum value from their assets but also offers advisory services, advanced analytics, and renewable solutions. Through partnership with TEA, clients benefit from an organization that understands the unique challenges facing community-owned utilities today. TEA is currently partnered with over 70 public power utilities nationwide. To learn more, visit www.teainc.org.
Fort Lauderdale, Florida (February 2, 2026) – Ubicquia, Inc., a leader in intelligent infrastructure solutions for utilities, municipalities and enterprises today announced the launch of AI-driven power monitoring services purpose-built for commercial and industrial (C&I) customers. Powered by Ubicquia’s AI driven UbiVu® analytics platform, the service delivers 24/7 monitoring, real-time visibility, and predictive insights into business-critical power quality issues—without upfront capital or operational disruption.
Designed for C&I customers of all sizes, the new service helps businesses predict and prevent emergency outages and reduce the operational and financial risks associated with poor power quality. The service is particularly beneficial for commercial and industrial environments where power reliability is mission-critical including commercial and residential buildings, logistics and distribution centers, multi-location retail operations, manufacturing facilities, telecommunications infrastructure, and data- and energy-sensitive operations.
“You can’t have grid reliability without grid visibility,” said Ian Aaron, Chief Executive Officer at Ubicquia. “We’ve taken the success of our UbiGrid® distribution transformer monitoring and UbiVu analytics platform deployed at scale with major utilities and made it available to commercial and industrial customers, as a service with no upfront capital. With UbiVu enabling the customer and utility to see the same real-time data, we can predict and identify power quality issues before they become failures.”
A $145 Billion Annual Business Problem
A study conducted by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) estimates that poor power quality costs U.S. businesses more than $145 billion annually, driven by equipment damage, data loss, operational downtime, and increased energy costs. Without real-time visibility into power quality, businesses struggle to understand root causes, predict failures, or take proactive action to protect critical operations.
Real-Time Visibility for Proactive Power Quality Management
Ubicquia addresses these challenges with 24/7 transformer monitoring and AI-driven, real-time power quality analytics that translate electrical anomalies into clear business impact and actionable insights. Ubicquia’s service helps C&I customers prevent:
- Damage to sensitive and high-value equipment (caused by sudden voltage events)
- Equipment malfunction, overheating, and shortened asset life
- Data loss and operational disruptions
- Unexpected increases in operating and energy costs
- Poor capacity planning due to unseen load growth
Power quality issues affect all buildings, including modern buildings, frequently causing equipment to overheat and waste energy. Ubicquia helps prevent these issues by continuously monitoring more than 24 power-quality parameters—such as voltage disturbances, harmonics, and load changes—and applies AI-driven analytics to detect, predict, and prioritize issues in real time. As part of the service, Ubicquia provides continuous monitoring and resolution coordination, working with both the customer and the local utility to quickly determine responsibility and accelerate responses.
“Ubicquia’s power quality analysis delivers insights that traditional power quality meters simply can’t,” said Melvin Liwag, Senior Engineer, System Planning and Reliability Engineering, Orlando Utilities Commission. “Shared, real-time visibility allows us to quickly determine whether an issue originates on the utility side or the customer side, coordinate resolution, and help protect equipment, improve reliability, and extend transformer life.”
Simple, Scalable Service Model for C&I Customers
- Low monthly cost per transformer business model
- No up-front capital
- No downtime
- Includes installation
- Includes real-time data for both the customer and utility*
- Includes 24/7 monitoring
- Includes resolution coordination with the customer and utility
* Real-time data can be integrated with existing building management systems and third-party platforms to support Energy Star™ compliance and revenue-grade metering.
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About Ubicquia
Ubicquia’s AI platforms make existing critical infrastructure intelligent to reduce energy consumption, increase resiliency, and enhance operational efficiency. Built on grid-scale deployments and billions of data points analyzed daily, Ubicquia’s analytics platforms deliver actionable insights across utilities, municipalities, and now commercial and industrial customers. Ubicquia® solutions—spanning sensors, software, and wireless connectivity—are compatible with hundreds of millions of grid and infrastructure assets worldwide and are deployed in more than 1,000 cities. For more information, visit www.ubicquia.com.
A large investor-owned utility in the Southeast operates more than 80,000 miles of overhead distribution lines and serves approximately 9 million customers across a fast-growing service territory. Sustained demand growth—driven by new residential development, electrification, and economic expansion—has required the utility to add new circuits across an already dense distribution network.
Maintaining reliability at this scale is not optional. Every operational decision carries systemwide impact.
Challenge
As the utility added more circuits to meet growing demand, fault activity began to increase across the network. Protective devices were doing their job—reclosers operated correctly and cleared faults—but the utility faced a new operational reality:
Faults were occurring more frequently as network density increased
Many faults were momentary, but still required investigation
Crews were being dispatched without clear insight into root cause
Reliability metrics, including SAIDI, began to feel pressure
The problem was not protection failure. It was lack of visibility into fault behavior as the system grew more complex.
Without understanding why faults were happening—or whether they were isolated or systemic—the utility was forced into a reactive posture that increased O&M costs and operational risk.
Solution
To close this gap, the utility deployed Electrical Grid Monitoring (EGM) line sensors in combination with reclosers, creating a more observable and intelligent distribution network.
As new neighborhoods were commissioned, the utility standardized the deployment of:
Reclosers for protection and isolation
EGM line sensors placed strategically along feeders and laterals
EGM analytics software to turn raw fault data into operational insight
EGM’s platform provided detailed, real-time visibility into each fault event, capturing:
Fault magnitude
Direction
Phase involvement
Event patterns across circuits
This intelligence allowed engineering and operations teams to move beyond fault clearing and into root cause analysis at scale—something that was previously impossible across such a large network.
With EGM in place, the utility fundamentally changed how it responded to fault activity:
Cleared faults no longer automatically triggered truck rolls
Crews were dispatched based on data, not uncertainty
Engineering teams identified recurring fault patterns tied to load growth and circuit expansion
Maintenance practices evolved from routine investigation to targeted intervention
Instead of reacting to individual events, the utility gained system-level awareness of how growth was affecting reliability.
Results
The operational improvements delivered clear, defensible outcomes within the first year:
Up to 25% reduction in truck rolls, driven by fewer unnecessary investigations
7.5 SAIDI minutes saved across the system in a single year
$3.7 million in O&M savings, with no compromise to safety or protection
Improved reliability performance as new load and circuits continued to come online
These results were achieved while the utility continued to grow, proving that reliability and expansion do not have to be tradeoffs.
Benefits
For large IOUs, the challenge is no longer whether faults can be cleared—it is whether the grid can be understood as it operates under increasing load and complexity.
EGM helps utilities answer critical questions:
Are faults isolated events or early indicators of stress?
Where is growth changing fault behavior?
Which events require action—and which do not?
By delivering practical, real-time grid intelligence, EGM enables utilities to operate with confidence as their networks evolve.
Conclusion
By adding situational awareness where it mattered most—downstream of protective devices—the utility transformed how it understood and responded to fault activity. What was once a reactive investigation process became a data-driven operating model grounded in real-time insight.
This deployment demonstrates how targeted grid visibility can deliver meaningful reliability improvements at scale, without requiring an overhaul of existing infrastructure. As distribution systems continue to grow in size and complexity, visibility is no longer optional—it is foundational to sustaining performance.
Bring Visibility to Your Distribution Network
Learn how Electrical Grid Monitoring helps utilities turn fault data into actionable insight—supporting reliability as systems grow and evolve.
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Contact Information
Andrea Wenz
andrea.wenz@egm.net
403-973-3301
3-phase transformers serve essential customers such as hospitals, factories, agriculture and data centers and are often the most expensive asset in the distribution system. They are part of the invisible grid, often below grade or in vaults.
