Each year, Itron hosts its Annual Energy Forecasting Group (EFG) Meeting, which has grown to include over 70 attendees representing over 45 companies. This year, the meeting was held in Savannah, Georgia from April 8 through 11. 

Every year includes presentations from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) and economic forecasters, as well as utility presentations and round table discussions. Despite the common annual format, the conference is never repetitive. Forecasting challenges continue to evolve and what was “hot” last year may not be “hot” this year.  

This year, I define “hot” as the economy and data centers. The four big things I learned this year are: 

1. The federal government still works. Despite the uncertainty surrounding the EIA’s 2025 Annual Energy Outlook (AEO) forecast release, Kevin Jarzomsky (EIA) happily announced that the official release date of April 15 (he presented on April 9). In the 2025 AEO, we expect to see a re-benchmarking into the 2018 CBECS and 2020 RECS surveys, updated modeling of the most recent policy and legislation, including revisions to on-premises data centers and electric vehicle forecast. We have begun updating the 2025 Statistically Adjusted End-Use (SAE) Excel files with the dataset from the 2025 AEO forecast. We are shooting to release the update by the end of summer. 
2. The federal government might work. Matt Martin (Oxford Economics) did an outstanding job of discussing the near-term economic issues despite the changing headwinds caused by the Trump Administration. Typical of the uncertainty, Matt’s presentation was immediately “outdated” when tariffs were rescinded the day before the conference. Outdated is probably not the right word, because Matt still had his finger on the pulse of the economy and presented the underlying current and risks. 
3. Even if the federal government may or may not work, Martin Holdrich (Woods & Poole) discussed the impact of immigration on the long-term economic forecasts. Martin ran a hypothetical “no-immigration” scenario and provided a quantification of the impact of stopping immigration. While “challenging”, it didn’t seem like a “doomsday” scenario as he has shown that through economic crisis after another, the primary work cohort is always full. 
4. Data Centers are real and uncertain. With all the talk of data center growth, Stan Blackwell (Dominion) offered clear definitions of data center types with the key phrase “capacity is not demand." In other words, what data centers request (capacity) is different than what data centers use (demand). While the impending capacity explosion appears real, actual demand is much more uncertain than we imagined.  

I’m sure that if you spoke to any attendee, their definition of “hot” would be different than mine. They might speak about electric vehicles, revenue forecasting, demand response programs, electrification, weather normalization, electric panels, weather response modeling or any one of the other amazing presentations. 

But I’m sure that we would all agree that Savannah is “hot.”

If you missed the meeting this year, make sure you catch us in Las Vegas in 2026.