Making Energy Affordability an Operating Principle of the Grid in DC and Maryland

Together with Pepco and Utilize Coalition, Electrify DC is leading the Affordability and Grid Optimization Task Force created on July 9th, 2026. Over the course of 12 months, the Task Force will produce:

• Grid Optimization & Affordability Framework — a practical framework for how utilities evaluate grid needs and compare operational, flexible, and traditional infrastructure solutions based on affordability, reliability, utilization, and customer value.
• Utility Performance & Policy Recommendations — recommendations for how grid utilization and affordability should be incorporated into utility operations, planning, investment decisions, and regulatory oversight.
• DC & Maryland Legislative Framework — development of policy language and a legislative strategy to introduce these principles in DC and Maryland in 2027.

Why it matters?

Energy affordability for low and medium income households is often addressed through programmatic solutions like bill assistance, after costs have already reached the customer. But as power demand grows and more investment is required to serve it, those programs alone cannot address the system costs that ultimately show up on customer bills.

From better grid utilization to lower long-term electricity costs

We are leading an intervention upstream addressing how decisions about operating, planning, and investing in the electric grid affect what customers ultimately pay. Our guiding thesis is:

What if affordability were a principle governing and assessing how the grid itself is operated, planned, and invested in?

Electrify DC, in partnership with Pepco and the Utilize Coalition, is leading a task force to introduce legislation providing a practical framework that utilities, regulators, policymakers, and advocates can use to evaluate grid investments through a common lens.

The goal is to maximize the value of the existing distribution system before requiring new investment—and ensure when investment is necessary that operational, flexible, and traditional infrastructure solutions are evaluated on a common basis to determine which can deliver the required grid outcome at the greatest value to customers.

Why Electrify DC

Electrify DC serves as the independent, public-interest nonprofit leading this work. We do not have a particular technology to sell or a financial interest. Our role is to keep the focus on the outcome: What does the grid need? How do we integrate more local clean power for resilience? How do we keep affordability the center of the conversation?

Our framework revolves around three stages:

Observe. Before determining that new infrastructure is necessary, does the utility have sufficient visibility to understand what is limiting the system, where and when the constraint occurs, how severe and persistent it is, and what existing capacity and resources are available?

Optimize. Can the existing system be operated differently to increase usable capacity? Could customer or grid-connected flexibility address the remaining need? If multiple solutions exist, how should their costs, reliability, asset impacts, forecast uncertainty, implementation timelines, and customer benefits be compared against traditional infrastructure?

Institutionalize. If an operational or flexible solution works, how does that demonstrated performance become part of utility practice? When should it change an annual load forecast, defer a planned upgrade, alter a ten-year capital plan, or affect the investments customers are ultimately asked to pay for?

The result would be a repeatable grid-optimization decision framework connecting day-to-day grid operations with long-term planning and investment.

Turning a Technical Optimization Framework into Energy Affordability Policy

Through 2026, the task force will develop and validate the framework with direct input from Pepco, technical experts, policy stakeholders, and organizations working on grid affordability.

In 2027, we will propose legislation establishing grid utilization and customer affordability as principles of distribution planning and investment and assessing utility performance.

Before customers are asked to pay for more infrastructure, we want to ensure utilities have made the best use of what customers are already paying for and evaluate the most cost-effective ways of meeting the grid’s needs.

This is an opportunity to move energy-affordability policy upstream—from helping households manage unaffordable electricity costs to changing the decisions that create those costs in the first place.