PG&E Transforms Grid Investment Planning with IFS Copperleaf

Overview Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), serving 16 million people across Northern California, is one of the largest combined electric and gas utilities in the United States. Operating 125,000 miles of electric circuits and 50,000 miles of natural gas pipelines, the company faces multi-dimensional challenges from updating infrastructure, electrification-driven growth and affordability pressures, to safety management and increasing climate volatility.

Recognizing that traditional program-based planning could no longer keep pace with this complexity, PG&E reimagined its approach to asset investment planning. Partnering with IFS Copperleaf, PG&E built a new integrated grid planning framework to optimize decisions, bundle projects, and transparently justify investments to regulators and customers.

The Starting Point: A Multi-Dimensional Risk Landscape

Historically, PG&E’s planning was programmatic: reliability programs, capacity programs, and wildfire hardening programs competed annually for the same funding. This siloed process meant customers could experience multiple outages from overlapping projects, while regulators lacked visibility into how trade-offs were made.

The company faced key challenges: • �Multi-dimensional risk: Reliability, capacity growth,

asset health, public safety, and financial risk all needed to be managed simultaneously

• �Regulatory expectations: California regulators demanded clarity, consistency, and defensibility in rate case submissions

• �Customer affordability: Investments had to be balanced with cost efficiency and minimal disruption

• �Organizational silos: Competing programs created inefficiencies and internal contest for capital

We realized we didn’t have enough dollars to address every system need at once. We had to evolve our approach to maximize efficiency, create transparency, and prioritize the most valuable work.” Wen Tu, Senior Director of Integrated Grid Planning, PG&E

The Technology Selection Process

PG&E developed the System Needs Analysis Platform (SNAP) in Palantir Foundry to aggregate and normalize data from 20 plus sources, covering 4.5 million assets. SNAP calculates enterprise-aligned risk across reliability, capacity, financial, and public safety dimensions, and feeds this into IFS Copperleaf for investment creation and optimization.

Key elements of the transformation: • �Bottom-up planning: Investments are now built from the asset

and circuit level rather than program-level requests • �Circuit-based execution: Projects are bundled by protection

zones or substations, ensuring customers are impacted once rather than multiple times

• �Automated investment creation: More than 17,000 bundled investments were generated across distribution and transmission

• �Scenario modeling: IFS Copperleaf enables leadership to test “what-if” scenarios under different financial, resource, and risk constraints, projecting 10-year outcomes

This solution replaced spreadsheet-driven, subjective processes with an evidence-based, value-driven framework for investment planning.

Why PG&E Chose Copperleaf

IFS Copperleaf’s optimization and scenario capabilities were central to PG&E’s transformation. The platform allows the company to: • Maximize risk reduction for every dollar spent • �Run multiple scenarios to evaluate trade-offs across

constraints • �Demonstrate transparency and defensibility in regulatory filings • �Align planning with long-term outcomes rather than

short-term fixes

Instead of competing programs, we now have trade-off discussions based on outcomes. IFS Copperleaf lets us quantify risks and benefits on a common economic scale, so we can prioritize investments that deliver the most value.” Joscelyn Wong, Senior Manager of Integrated Grid Planning, PG&E

Implementation and Early Benefits

PG&E piloted its new circuit-based, bundled planning approach with a $100 million portfolio in 2024. At that stage, bundles were created manually, so-called “mega bundles”, to validate the concept before scaling with IFS Copperleaf automation. The pilot produced striking results.

• �Fewer outages: Coordinating projects by circuit rather than program cut planned outages by 50%. Customers experienced one consolidated outage rather than multiple disruptions

• �Cost savings: Bundling also streamlined field execution, saving $18 million, around 20%, on equivalent units of work. Those funds could be redirected to other pressing system needs

• �Collaboration gains: Instead of internal competition between programs competing for funds, IFS Copperleaf enabled outcome-based trade-offs. As Senior Manager Joscelyn Wong noted, “One investment that would have been treated as ten separate projects was now addressed as a single bundle, minimizing impact and optimizing resources.”

• �Quantified value: With risks normalized in SNAP and optimized in IFS Copperleaf, PG&E showed that a $15 million bundle could deliver $30 million in mitigated risk value

The implications at scale are enormous in a company the size of PG&E. With $10–20 billion invested annually, PG&E has identified the opportunity to realize up to $3.7 billion in efficiencies over a six-year period. Achieving these savings will require sustained change management efforts, and any efficiencies gained will be reinvested into grid modernization and customer-focused initiatives. As Wen Tu, Senior Director of Integrated Grid Planning, put it: “We’re moving away from subjective debates to objective, risk-based decisions that maximize efficiency and minimize customer impact. This is future-proofing how we plan our grid.”

Future Plans

PG&E aims to expand its use of IFS Copperleaf and SNAP to cover 100% of plannable capital investments and incorporate additional asset classes. Future directions include: • �Integrating expense and maintenance work with capital

planning • Enhancing bundling logic with execution team feedback • Refining transmission risk and capacity models • �Supporting industry-wide standardization of value frameworks

As Wen Tu summarized: “IFS Copperleaf allows us to run scenarios that show 10-year outcomes of today’s decisions. This shifts planning from subjective debates to fact-based trade-offs, giving us confidence that we’re maximizing value for customers and regulators.”

Why Copperleaf?

PG&E invests $10-20 billion in its system each year. By shifting to bundled, optimized planning with IFS Copperleaf, we’ve identified the opportunity to realize up to $3.7 billion in potential efficiencies over six years. We can reinvest these savings to deliver even more value for customers.” Wen Tu, Senior Director of Integrated Grid Planning, PG&E

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