Having spent decades in the field service industry, the Field Five team is excited to bring you a variety of voices, perspectives, and industries across the field service landscape throughout Season 1.
Welcome to the third episode of the Field Five, a Service Pro by MSI data podcast. In this episode, we feature a special guest: clean energy and onsite power expert TJ Murphy, who gives us a glance at PowerGen 2026.
PowerGen is the largest annual event for the power generation industry, with over 7,200 attendees from companies around the world. The event features nine conference tracks, 470 exhibitors, and attracts attendees from over 70 countries. The event brings together different segments of the power generation industry to facilitate dialogue and collaboration, and help meet the growing demand for electricity from various sources such as natural gas, solar, wind, nuclear, and more.
Listen in just 5 minutes!
Welcome back to another episode of field five. Today is a special featured spotlight episode where we are going to have TJ Murphy from PowerGen speak a little bit about the state of the industry with a twist. I'm talking all things PowerGen and what to expect for the rest of this year and looking ahead into 2026. So everybody out there, hey, this is TJ Murphy from PowerGen where the premier networking and business hub for power generation professionals. You know technically yeah we're a conference and trade show. But what I like to call it is its sales activated ecosystem. This is an annual conference. It brings together, you know, over 7200 people. It's been going on for the last 25 plus years. It really serves as a platform for the industry to learn, analyze, collaborate, explore new solutions as we really meet the moment of increased demand of electricity and reliability, you know, but we also keep an eye towards the environment, You know, clean energy is at the top of everybody's mind, the environment and some of the new, newer generations are really focused on it. But each year, the Power Gen brings together this group of attendees from utilities, EPCs, power producers, OEMs, large scale energy users like data centers, manufacturing and really want to bring everybody together so they can learn, analyze, really be part of the shape how power is going to be delivered in the next ten, 20, 30 years for the next generation. A lot of people say it's not as big as it used to be. Well, that's because the show resized itself. In earlier years. We got 20,000 attendees and over 1200 exhibitors. The show revolved around coal fired centralized power plants with conveyor belts, pulverizes, heavy machinery, and even a maritime component to move all of that coal. Today, the 7200 attendees are there to see the new environment, the new landscape of PowerGen. So the 7200 attendees come for the nine conference tracks, the technical conference tracks, they come for the over seven, 470 exhibitors and it's certainly growing. In February, we saw a 12% year over year increase in attendance, with our VP and C level attendance growing 32% and 52% respectively. We have a 2 to 1 buyer seller ratio, and we're attracting attendees from over 70 countries. That's like 13% of the audience. So this is a critical intersection of this evolving power sector, or facilitating dialogue between different segments of the power generation industry. And it's necessary. We make electricity from all different resources like natural gas, solar, wind, nuclear, hydrogen. What else is there? Biofuels. Can't forget coal. And for 2026, we're including hydropower too. But we need all of them to meet the growing demand for electricity. Everybody said, you know, that it's going to continue to grow at a at an exponential rate. So how are we going to do that? PowerGen is going to bring all of the different areas of the business together, facilitate this dialogue, help each other with projects, attach themselves. How can everybody work together to meet this moment? Now, in my opinion, there's no better time to be in the power industry. Companies are actively sourcing for these new projects retrofits, shutdowns, maintenance operations. Heck, let's face it. Operation and maintenance is so important to reliability and availability, and nobody wants to lose electricity. So it's the largest event of its kind in the industry in 2026. January 20th through the 22nd will have four distinct zones on the show floor with
stages. We have a nuclear operation and maintenance for plant services. Is our new hydropower zone. And because it's so popular, because it has such an impact on the electricity generation data center zone is going to be added to the show floor as well. So those are our real areas for the show. But in the middle, the center stage concept from last year's show was a huge success. So we made it a focal point for the 2026 show. We have really added in that area. It's a really cool and unique area. It it's going to bring an elevated experience to the floor with high level, relevant content workshops. We're planning meetups. We'll have high level panel discussions. It really helps create a buzz and brings delegates to the show floor to see the vendors. And we've been attending PowerGen for a couple of years now. So we've seen some of that transformation. It is truly incredible. That's another field five episode. We're looking forward to even more special guests upcoming from various verticals, so stay tuned.
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Alyce Peterson is Product Marketing Manager at Service Pro by MSI Data in Milwaukee serving the field service industry with over a decade of marketing expertise—from software, to startups to global Fortune 500s—to the field service industry. After serving on numerous volunteer boards, in 2025 she’s now Vice Chair of EGSA’s Membership Committee.
