Tech Vision 2025: Utilities industry perspective

Accenture’s Tech Vision 2025 highlights a fundamental shift in artificial intelligence (AI)—from automation to true autonomy. This transformation is redefining how businesses operate, make decisions, and interact with the world. AI is no longer just a tool for efficiency; it is becoming an intelligent collaborator, capable of reshaping entire industries.

While these trends are reshaping every sector, utilities are at a particularly transformative moment. AI is now "always on," embedded in everything from grid management and energy forecasting to customer engagement and workforce operations. As utilities accelerate digital transformation, they must navigate both opportunities and challenges. 74% of utility executives believe that AI’s full potential can only be realized when it is built on a foundation of trust.

In this blog, we’ll explore how AI is revolutionizing utilities—optimizing operations at both a system-wide and physical level, transforming customer engagement, and augmenting the workforce with AI-driven tools. Through real-world examples, we’ll see how utilities are already leveraging AI to modernize infrastructure, improve reliability, and drive operational excellence. The future of utilities is not just digital—it is AI-powered, adaptive, and autonomous.

The Binary Big Bang: AI is redefining digital systems in utilities

The shift from traditional app-based models to agent-driven ecosystems marks a turning point in how digital systems are designed and operated. In utilities, this transformation is unlocking greater agility, efficiency, and real-time decision-making, reshaping everything from operations to grid management to regulatory compliance.

How AI agents are redefining utility operations

• Grid Modernization: AI-powered Distributed Energy Resource Management (DERM) systems will balance supply and demand dynamically, integrating renewables, battery storage, and demand-side flexibility.
  
  
• Automated Infrastructure Monitoring: Self-healing grids will autonomously detect and isolate faults, reducing outages and enhancing grid resilience.
  
  
• Regulatory Filing, Compliance & Market Adaptation: AI will streamline regulatory filings, automate reporting, and optimize emissions tracking and energy market participation, helping utilities navigate evolving mandates.
  
  
• Customer Operations & Field Services: AI-driven automation and intelligent dispatching are improving call centers, field service management, and predictive maintenance, enhancing efficiency and response times.

AI-driven automation is already redefining operations, with 71% of industry executives agreeing that AI agents will reinvent how digital systems are built. Take AES, which has leveraged AI-powered safety audits to improve compliance and cut costs. Previously, audits required 100 hours of manual review across 400 pages of documentation. By deploying AI agents on Google Cloud’s Vertex AI, AES reduced costs by 99%, delivering results in just one hour while improving accuracy.

Looking ahead: AI as an orchestrator of energy systems

With 24% of utility executives anticipating a significant increase and 64% a moderate increase in AI agents within the next three years, AI’s role is shifting from an operational tool to a real-time decision-maker. As its capabilities expand, AI will play an increasing role in navigating regulatory complexity, automating compliance, and supporting decarbonization mandates. While AI is already integrated into some operations, utilities will likely see even greater automation in regulatory filings, energy market participation, and sustainability initiatives.

Rather than just enhancing existing systems, AI is reshaping how utilities build, manage, and optimize their digital operations, setting the stage for a more adaptive and intelligent industry.

Your face, in the future: Differentiating AI-driven customer interactions

AI has become central to customer interactions, but utilities face a new challenge: ensuring AI-driven experiences feel distinct and brand-aligned, rather than generic. While automation is valuable, 78% of utility executives agree that AI agents that all sound the same create differentiation challenges.

The competitive retail energy sector is already using AI-powered customer engagement to stand out, leveraging personalized AI personas and multimodal models to create more interactive experiences. For utilities, adopting similar strategies can ensure AI-driven interactions enhance efficiency while strengthening customer relationships and reinforcing brand identity.

How AI is reshaping utility customer engagement

• AI-Powered Personalization: AI can tailor interactions based on customer history and behavioral data, ensuring engagements feel relevant.
  
  
• Brand Consistency Across AI Interfaces: Companies must train AI models to reflect their brand’s values and tone, ensuring a seamless, recognizable experience.
  
  
• Building Trust Through Transparency: 71% of executives recognize the need to proactively establish trust between AI and customers.

Utilities are beginning to embrace AI-driven engagement. Iberdrola, for instance, has partnered with AWS to build over 100 generative AI applications, including voice agents that provide real-time responses to customer inquiries about tariffs and products.

Looking ahead: Intelligent, adaptive, and trustworthy AI

As AI evolves, 88% of utility executives believe that maintaining a consistent AI personality will be crucial over the next three years. Customers will expect AI to not only respond efficiently but also remember past interactions and adjust accordingly, yet AI-driven interactions can feel generic if not carefully fine-tuned. Ensuring AI aligns with brand identity and customer expectations will be key to delivering meaningful engagement.

The utilities that succeed in this space will be those that fine-tune AI models to balance efficiency, personalization, and trust, ensuring AI becomes a differentiator rather than just an automation tool.

When LLMs get their bodies: AI-powered robotics in utilities

AI is no longer confined to digital systems—it’s now moving into the physical world. The integration of Large Language Models (LLMs) and robotics is reshaping utilities by enabling robots to understand their environment, collaborate with humans, and autonomously perform critical tasks.

How AI-powered robotics are transforming utilities

• AI-Driven Field Operations: Robots equipped with LLMs and vision-language models (VLMs) can inspect infrastructure, detect leaks, and conduct repairs autonomously.
  
  
• Resilient Infrastructure Management: Self-healing grids will use AI-powered robotics to detect, isolate, and fix faults in real-time, improving grid resilience.
  
  
• Workforce Safety & Efficiency: Intelligent robots will handle hazardous tasks, reducing downtime and enhancing worker safety.
  
  
• Extreme Weather Resilience: As weather volatility increases, AI-powered robotics can assess damage, coordinate repairs, and restore service faster than human response alone.

We are already seeing AI-powered robotics in action. ACWA Robotics has introduced Pathfinder, an autonomous robot that navigates water pipelines to assess infrastructure health without disrupting service. In October 2024, Pathfinder successfully completed its first mission on the Dunkirk water network, demonstrating its ability to detect corrosion, capture high-resolution images, and measure pipe thickness.

Looking ahead: The expansion of AI robotics in utilities

With 71% of utility executives recognizing the promise of intelligent, adaptable robots, AI-powered machines will become integral to field operations and infrastructure maintenance. These robots will operate in unpredictable environments, a key advantage cited by 66% of these executives.

As adoption grows, utilities must also address responsible AI governance, with 70% of executives agreeing that organizations must integrate responsible AI principles into robotics deployments to ensure they operate safely, ethically, and in alignment with regulations. At the same time, 77% of utilities executives believe natural language communication will be essential for building trust between humans and AI-driven machines. The utilities that lead in this space will be those that integrate robotics seamlessly, ensuring they enhance—not replace—human expertise.

The new learning loop: AI as a partner in workforce innovation

AI is not just reshaping workflows—it’s redefining how employees learn, collaborate, and drive innovation. Unlike past automation, which focused on replacing repetitive tasks, AI today is a learning technology, evolving alongside human workers to enhance decision-making and creativity. In utilities, this shift presents a major opportunity to empower employees rather than displace them.

How AI is transforming the utility workforce

• AI-Driven Workforce Upskilling: 62% of utility executives see an urgent need to upskill employees in AI tools, making AI education a priority.
  
  
• Empowering Employees with AI Tools: 34% of executives expect AI copilots and automation to streamline workflows, reducing manual effort and boosting innovation.
  
  
• Shifting Employee Roles: As AI takes over routine tasks, 80% of executives anticipate a shift toward more innovation-focused roles.

Some utilities are already adapting to this new reality. E.ON, one of Europe’s largest energy providers, has introduced E.ON GPT, an AI-powered assistant designed to support 74,000 employees. The system helps with research, market analysis, and document generation, streamlining daily tasks and allowing employees to focus on complex problem-solving. To ensure widespread adoption, E.ON launched internal AI training programs, offering video tutorials, interactive Q&A sessions, and on-the-job AI coaching.

Looking forward: AI as an essential workforce tool

As AI becomes more embedded in utilities, trust and transparency will determine how successfully organizations integrate AI into the workforce. 72% of utility executives believe that trust is essential to capturing AI’s full benefits, making it critical for leaders to emphasize AI’s role as a collaborator rather than a replacement.

However, in highly regulated areas like nuclear energy, there are real barriers to AI adoption. Many organizations will need to carefully assess where AI adds value while ensuring human oversight remains central to critical decision-making.

Building this trust starts with clear communication. 76% of executives agree that openly discussing AI strategy with employees is key to fostering acceptance and confidence in AI-driven processes. The utilities that succeed will be those that engage employees early, provide continuous AI training, and create a culture where AI is seen as a tool for empowerment rather than disruption.

AI in the workplace is no longer just about efficiency—it’s about innovation, adaptability, and unlocking human potential. The utilities that embrace AI as a true partner in workforce transformation will create a more agile, forward-thinking industry, ready to meet the challenges of the future.

Conclusion

AI is no longer a futuristic concept in utilities—it is happening now. From agent-driven digital systems and intelligent customer interactions to AI-powered robotics and workforce transformation, the industry is moving toward a future where AI does more than assist—it orchestrates, optimizes, and adapts in real time.

Each of the four major trends covered in Accenture’s Tech Vision 2025 presents both opportunities and challenges. AI will modernize grid infrastructure, improve reliability, and enhance customer interactions, but utilities must also focus on trust, transparency, and responsible AI adoption to fully capture its potential.

Looking ahead, utilities that embrace AI strategically—balancing automation with human expertise—will lead the industry into a new era. With AI agents refining digital operations, robots revolutionizing fieldwork, and AI copilots enhancing the workforce, utilities are building a future that is more efficient, resilient, and adaptive than ever before.

The AI-driven utility sector is not just about technology—it’s about transformation. The companies that take action now, invest in AI responsibly, and build trust into their digital future will set the standard for the next generation of energy and utility providers.