Sharing Energy, Sharing Risks: Intelligent Power Grids for a More Secure South Asia

South Asia's power systems face increasing pressure from global fuel price volatility, climate-related disasters, and rapid demand growth that is outpacing domestic supply and grid upgrades. Alongside longstanding challenges of basic access and reliability, new patterns of demand are emerging from urbanization, industry, and digital services, including data centers that require high-quality, around-the-clock power. In this context, smarter, more flexible and digitally enabled grids are becoming essential, not only to support clean energy deployment, but also to manage operational risks, enhance reliability, and maintain affordability.

Utilities and system operators across the region are beginning to deploy new technologies and approaches, such as advanced forecasting, modern control and monitoring systems, storage, and demand-side flexibility, but implementation remains uneven and many networks are still characterized by aging assets, high losses, and limited visibility. Intelligent, data-driven coordination of generation, transmission, distribution, and demand can help South Asian power systems integrate higher shares of variable renewable energy, cope with climate-related shocks, and serve increasingly complex loads. This session will examine how these "intelligent grids" can be designed and operated in practice to strengthen security and resilience in different country contexts.