Utilities are being asked to do more with every dollar. Load is growing, wildfire and storm seasons are getting harder, and the grid needs serious investment, yet customers and regulators are pushing back on rising bills.
Every line item in the operating budget is under scrutiny, and vegetation management, one of the largest recurring maintenance costs for most utilities, is no exception.
That tension sits at the heart of GridFWD 2026, taking place September 29-30, 2026, at Cliff Lodge at Snowbird, Utah, just outside Salt Lake City.
Organized by Grid Forward, the event brings together utilities, grid operators, regulators, and solution providers around this year's theme: "Reprioritizing Affordability for Modernizing the Grid."
Making Vegetation Management More Affordable with Treeline
At GridFWD 2026, you will find us at our table in the Innovation Pavilion, showcasing Treeline, our AI-powered, satellite-based vegetation management platform. Treeline helps utilities spend their vegetation budget where the risk actually is, instead of spreading it evenly across fixed trim cycles and manual patrols.
With Treeline, utility teams can:
- Monitor the entire network continuously: get network-wide visibility of vegetation conditions from satellite, not just the spans a crew reached this cycle
- Prioritize work by risk: use AI-driven, span-level risk scoring to send crews to the circuits that need attention first
- Move to condition-based cycles: trim where growth and risk justify it, and avoid spending on spans that do not need it yet
- Reduce field inspection costs: cut the number of routine patrols and truck rolls needed to understand network conditions
- Strengthen wildfire and storm resilience: identify encroachments and hazard trees early, before they cause outages or ignitions
- Evidence spending and compliance: support regulatory filings and rate cases with map-based, audit-ready reporting
Built for Utilities Balancing Reliability and Affordability
Treeline is built for utility teams that have to deliver safety and reliability while keeping costs in check. By replacing assumptions with data, it turns vegetation management from a fixed, calendar-driven expense into a targeted, measurable program that can show exactly where every dollar went and what risk it removed.
Let's Connect in Snowbird!
Our team will be on site throughout GridFWD 2026, and you can find us at our table in the Innovation Pavilion. Stop by to see Treeline in action, explore how utilities are using satellite intelligence to control vegetation costs, and talk through the affordability challenges facing your own program.
Come say hello and pick up some LiveEO swag while you are there. We look forward to seeing you in the mountains!
