When I first showed up at Georgia Power at the ripe old age of 19, I was assigned to work at the test lab located within the General Services Headquarters. As an intern, my early assignments were to evaluate basic products including fuses, batteries and electrical tape.
I was also a member of the greater Georgia Power family. Here is an example of the reach and breadth of family. Each summer the company would send buses all throughout Georgia to bring retirees to the services headquarters for a barbeque luncheon. This was a really big event where the president would share the company’s vision with the attendees. The message to retirees was clear. Yes, you might be retired, but you are family and you are also crucial to the functioning of the utility. The retirees took the insights they gained at the barbeque and shared this information back in their hometowns. Today, the company slogan, “A Citizen Wherever We Serve” remains central to the company’s identity.
And this culture is not unique to Georgia Power. We work in an industry where we look after our customers and we look after our own. To many of us, it’s family. At our core is the desire to serve our customers with an essential product at a reasonable price.
When Nikki asked me to share a few thoughts for this 75th anniversary issue, I was more than willing. But let me share with you why I joined T&D World back in 1994. Then, Vice President Al Gore stated that we were entering the Information Age that would drive economic growth. I knew that at T&D World, I could encourage and assist engineers in sharing insights and initiatives with one another — and in the process move our industry forward. And T&D World continues to provide this same knowledge transfer today.
In my 47 years engaged with the utility industry, first with Georgia Power and then with T&D World, I have had the privilege to participate in many technology advances.
We’ve seen long term trends and we’ve seen a fair share of fads too.
Remember the era where a number of utilities decided that power trading was the future? I recall that Enron decided that there was even a market for dark fiber. But power trading never developed the margins expected and the utilities exited the trading business.
Here is another initiative that didn’t last. Remember when just about every utility decided to launch an energy services company? The intent was that this for-profit arm would make up for some of the revenue lost to the Retailcos that were emerging in what was predicted to become a highly competitive market.
Flipping through back issues of T&D provided me with a bit of deja vu. Back in April of 1997, I predicted that we would see the emergence of Independent Transmission Companies. We now have ITCs, but they have’t had as significant an impact as I had anticipated. Difficulties in siting and permitting continue to slow progress in developing new transmission.
Some initiatives are now fully integrated into the business. Back in 1997, T&D World covered the first major Distribution Automation System that was installed in Detroit. Around the same time, there were seemingly a hundred companies trying to break into the Automated Meter Reading space. As with many new technologies, a handful of companies prevailed and Distribution Automation and AMR systems are now ubiquitous. Same with Automated Customer Call Centers, Enterprise Resource Planning systems and Automated Mapping and Facilities Management systems.
I also predicted we would see a rise in telecommuting but I didn’t anticipate a virus would speed this trend along.
The way we respond to issues define us. Look at the incredible resources we expend in preparing for the next big weather event — whether it be a hurricane, an earthquake, an ice storm, a flood or a fire. We must be prepared to act, and act quickly. Among the major hurricanes I covered were Katrina, Ike and Sandy. This was the most exhausting, yet most fulfilling work I ever took on. And this might be said for all of us who work major weather events.
Here are a few recent examples of progress in intelligent systems applied during storm work: Duke Energy Florida customers saved more than 200 million outage minutes during hurricanes Ian, Nicole and Idalia with self-healing technology. Similarly Florida Power & Light’s smart grid technology enabled the utility to avoid nearly 70,000 outages when Hurricane Idalia hit.
So what big issues will we face going forward? Each utility perspective is different, but I expect that many utilities are focusing on how to deal with cyber hackers and how to address both the positive and negative aspects of artificial intelligence.
Probably the biggest hurdle we face today is the building out of a much more robust and sophisticated grid to handle the exponential growth in wind, solar and energy storage, while addressing increased loads driven by electric vehicles and cloud-based data center markets.
I have come to realize that our response to industry challenges define us.
My hope is that you have the opportunity to pour your heart and soul into our next great challenges and in so doing, significantly impact this great industry for the better.
