Grid Resilience + Reliability

Grid resilience is the ability to adapt to changing conditions, withstand potentially disruptive events, and, if disrupted, to rapidly recover. Topics covered may include forecasting risk, wildfire response, grid hardening strategies, continuously improve reliability practices to better address more frequent and impactful weather events, address customer and regulatory changes in expectations, using data science and leveraging AI to guide improvements, and customer-focused metrics of reliability performance.

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Wednesday, April 24, 2024

1:15 PM – 2:30 PM
Bringing Climate Resilience and Adaptation into Integrated Planning
Moderator: Mike Bianco, Managing Director, Black & Veatch
Panelists: Martin Wyspianski, VP, Electric Engineering, Asset and Regulatory, Pacific Gas and Electric Company
Eknath Vittal, Sr. Principal Technical Leader Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI)
Vinh Nguyen, Manager, Capital Portfolio Delivery, Portland General Electric
Forest Kaser, Deputy Executive Director for CPUC Safety Policy Division, California Public Utilities Commission
Investments in climate resilience and adaptation are needed to mitigate threats, impact, and recovery time in extreme weather events. Climate resilience for utilities requires identifying the customer and financial impacts of exposure to climate threats (e.g., heat, ice, flooding, wind, fire, etc.), conducting mitigation scenario analysis, and value-stacking these investments across more traditional investments in reliability, capacity, and safety. Climate risk modeling and mitigation planning is now more commonly integrated into utility capital planning. Analyzing climate risk enables utilities to target investments and execution priorities to the most exposed areas and assets in the system.

This panel will include a discussion on climate resilience and adaptation objectives, key drivers, lessons learned, and experience with data collection, climate modeling, portfolio to asset risk mitigation, and investment prioritization. This session will benefit from a well-rounded group of panelists, providing industry experience and insights from Utilities, Public Utility Commissions, Industry research and standards development, and Practitioners.

Key discussion points will include:
– Leveraging a common framework to drive industry consistency and regulatory approval
– Working through data gaps and data quality issues
– Evaluating vulnerabilities and mitigation options at an asset and portfolio level
– Ensuring a transparent, defensible approach to prioritize and optimize investments across competing capital programs

Thursday, April 25, 2024

9:30 AM – 10:45 AM
Leveraging Analytics to Advance the Asset Management Practice
Moderator: Rob Otal, Executive Director, METSCO Energy Solutions Inc.
Speakers: Wen Tu, Director – Applied Technology Services, Pacific Gas and Electric Company
Emilie Dierickx, Director – Asset Management, Portland General Electric
Jonathan Lee, Engineer, Distribution Planning, EPCOR Distribution and Transmission Inc.
Morgan Griffith, Principal Engineer, Exponent
In today’s rapidly evolving utility landscape, effective asset management (AM) is paramount to ensure the reliability, efficiency, and sustainability of critical infrastructure. It also addresses emerging challenges, such as the introduction of renewables, EVs, specialized customers, and the impacts from extreme weather events. This session will showcase recent efforts undertaken by utilities to further advance their AM practices. These efforts aim to enhance grid resiliency, continue to integrate renewables and new technologies, while continuing to achieve regulatory requirements and maintain reasonable rates for customers.

1:45 PM – 3:00 PM
Risk and Prioritization for Energy Investments
Moderator: Kenneth Murry, Electric Construction & Maintenance Manager, Colorado Springs Utilities
Panelists: Simon Chan, Asset Management Senior Engineer, ENMAX Corporation
Russ Prentice, VP, Enterprise and Operational Risk Management, Pacific Gas and Electric Company
Kaz Berjian, Director, ATCO Natural Gas
This session will cover key foundational components of a grid resilience and reliability program aligned to Corporate Strategy.  We will evaluate how to balance considerations surrounding forecasting financial risk, safety risk, reliability risk and the effects of climate change. The panel will discuss their approaches on managing these data points while simultaneously factoring in the expectations from key stakeholders, ranging from external regulators and internal partners with oversight over these investments. These elements strategically establish the multi-dimensional criteria used in determining which projects to forego and which to execute as the optimal programs and projects to prioritize in each companies’ business plan.