Utility Week Live 2026: A turning point for our utility networks

Utility Week Live 2026 this week brought together leaders, innovators and policymakers from across the utility networks, with Calisen’s team deployed to soak up the atmosphere. The message from presenters, panels and keynote speakers was clear: energy and water markets are becoming more volatile on both the supply and demand side, causing knock-on effects to the end-users.

While much of the discussions revisited familiar territory, there was new emphasis placed on the significant structural, behavioural and scalability challenges that remain. Especially across water funding cycles and energy flexibility. Ageing assets in an increasingly unpredictable environment (both from a market and climate perspective) is creating regional imbalances for consumers. Despite technological advancements, the path to stability remains complex. See more of our team’s thoughts below.

Scaling innovation

A recurring theme throughout the conference was the challenge of scaling innovation. While flexibility markets and smart technologies continue to advance, many organisations acknowledged that business models are still maturing. Flexibility solutions, for example, are delivering value, but often only for the most engaged or well-equipped customers. This raises important questions about accessibility and inclusion, particularly for more vulnerable groups.

Consumer behaviour

Insights shared from presenters reinforced that incentives alone are not enough to drive sustained behavioural change. While innovation in tariffs and flexibility services is progressing, motivating long-term engagement remains difficult. The need for better behavioural design, combining data insights with human-centred approaches, was highlighted as critical to unlocking meaningful participation at scale.

The use of data

Digitalisation across different organisations all leading different components of the system – networks to suppliers to consumer consent and delivery – the challenge is not just tech innovation, but also one of coordination and data sharing. Building a truly integrated ecosystem will require strong collaboration across stakeholders, with clear governance and shared objectives.

Asset and system resilience

The message on resilience was unified across all utilities – existing infrastructure is ageing, and adequate investment is required to fix it. In the energy space, flexibility continued to be touted as the solution to the grid. However, it's clear that while innovations such as virtual power plants and dynamic pricing are creating new opportunities, many customers still prioritise simplicity and predictability over price optimisation – behaviour change is key. For water, it was simpler. Companies need the freedom from the regulator to raise capital for the required work, and this steer must come from the regulator ahead of PR29.

The event painted a picture of UK industry at a pivotal moment. Calisen is working at the crux of consumers and network providers to create inclusive solutions for all, whether that be through better data sharing, enabling more flexible tariffs and products, or reducing water usage through leak identification and demand management.

We stand prepared at this turning point and ready to deliver for the system.