EDF Power Solutions North America

Dalen Copeland

Renewable Innovation Authority

Running IT on the Economics of Energy

More than my experience as a technology leader, my experience as a business leader in the renewables industry has shaped my approach to driving digital transformation in the energy sector. My experience in legal and business functions shaped my view of my organization’s digital investments and efforts.

IT is like a business. We must define our services, calculate our costs, determine whether other business units will support our costs, and ultimately understand what business outcomes our products and services deliver or what other products and services we need to build to drive meaningful results. For offtake contracts, grid access and capital, IPPs compete on price and reliability. My IT investment decisions are driven by that competitive reality, not by compliance requirements or technology trends. Technology leaders in the energy sector need to understand how their company makes money and what its competitive differentiators are, while staying secure and reliable.

Modernizing Power Systems Without Breaking Trust

Modernizing strategy, people, process and technology of an organization is not for the faint of heart. Keeping the lights on is what IT people across all industries refer to as critical operations work for a reason. When we talk about operational continuity in the power industry, it actually means what it says. It takes a passion for continuous improvement and a keen awareness of how IT’s actions impact our assets, whether they are patching or transformational initiatives, in order to maintain power generation assets, comply with tight regulatory response times and advocate with regulators for technological advances like cloud usage and NERC. In collaboration with our asset management and operations partners, we are aware of scarcity events and act accordingly. Whenever a vendor leaves, and we need to monitor and control assets, we dive into supporting system takeovers.

Accumulated debt can also be a problem. Almost every technology organization has more debt than they acknowledge, not just technical debt from aging systems and deferred maintenance, but process debt from manual workarounds and undocumented workflows and organizational debt from previous transformations that overpromised but underdelivered. Having to face that honestly is the first step. Openly acknowledging it validates your team’s understanding and rebuilds the trust you need to take on the next initiative. A culture of transformation is not a given; it’s something you earn by showing how we got here, why we got there and how we should move forward.

Turning Trusted Data Into Operational Advantage

Data generated by energy assets is significant. Data-driven organizations will outperform those that cannot. The bottleneck I see consistently isn’t analytical sophistication. Whether the underlying data is clean, governed and trusted. Our data strategy and platform are built on the principle of responsible by design - governance, access controls and quality standards are built in from the start. In the latest evolution of our data strategy and platform investments, we’ve seen business teams sharing analytics capabilities without IT involvement. People stake their own credibility on data when that happens. Our data platform is now more trustworthy, and spreadsheet-based shadow reporting is dropping measurable.

“I Run IT like a business—operational score cards, annual investment portfolio NPV tracking, continuous review of cost optimization opportunities and service quality as well as full cost transparency— so that we can all consider whether IT delivers what is expected.”

Automating well-designed processes is critical to competitiveness and regulatory compliance.

Health data and AI can provide substantial productivity and insights for Energy industry leaders and employees. Bad processes and bad data are amplified by automation and AI. In the power sector, mistakes and model errors are tolerated less. In order to reap the benefits of automation and AI-assisted analytics, organizations must have already standardized their data and consolidated their platforms. Whatever foundation you have, technology tends to amplify it.

Balancing Innovation with Commercial Discipline

CIOs must constantly balance costs, culture and change. My team is always challenged to think about what makes our organization competitive. Are we ready for the changes we need to make to stay competitive? Can we feed innovation back into our competitiveness analysis? Involving the business to prioritize investments based on business outcomes and data that tie to competitiveness or employee experience builds alignment. Effective change leaders are aligned and credible. Our goals can be achieved by defining clear objectives based on business priorities and understanding the current state. Our use of CIS Controls and NIST is a repeatable, auditable way to assess the current state, identify gaps and set annual investment priorities. Since launching the program in 2023, that discipline has led to a 21% increase in fully implemented CIS controls, resulting in a noticeable reduction in attack surfaces. Our roadmap isn’t influenced by vendors or internal advocacy.

When advocating for significant business changes, I rely heavily on my credibility within the organization. My language when advocating for change or asking for investment is commercial. I run IT like a business - operational score cards, annual investment portfolio NPV tracking, continuous review of cost optimization opportunities and service quality, as well as full cost transparency so that we can all consider whether IT delivers what is expected.

Wisdom from Experience

Become technical and commercially fluent. There are many technical decisions ahead, including AI-assisted asset optimization and data architecture for distributed generation. The decisions will be made in boardrooms and contract negotiations. Both rooms must be effective.

Get to know the business model. Understanding capacity factors, counterparty risk and capital allocation. Become a strategic voice by speaking the language fluently.

Honesty in the present. Self-assessment without structure takes on an optimistic tone. Leadership in this sector is about knowing where you actually stand before making decisions.

Finally, distinguish innovation from competition. Renewables aren’t always the same. What makes us harder to beat should drive your technology agenda, not what’s possible.