Energy Central

The utility industry is a unique one in that the landscape of companies aren’t operating in a zero-sum competitive environment. Instead, utilities seek to share lessons learned, raise each other up, and collectively move towards the industry-wide goals of ensuring the entire country has access to reliable, affordable, and clean energy. It’s this collaborative environment and tendency to share best...

The global efforts to decarbonize require an all-hands-on-deck approach across the economy, with one of the toughest areas to tackle remaining the industrial sector. The production of cement, glass, steel, and other key materials all require dispatchable, reliable, affordable energy. At the same time, the prospect of rapidly having to rely solely on renewables like solar or wind is a daunting pros...

Data has become a much sought after asset in the utility world, providing arguably as much value as the electrons being sent over the grid. When utilities have data on consumption patterns, asset performance, and digital engagement, they are armed with the tools to optimize their processes to improve service and save themselves and their customers on costs. The journey over recent years to embrace...

Artificial intelligence (AI) has transformed every industry it's touched, from commerce to transportation to social media, but arguably some of the most widespread impact that AI-enabled tools is on the electric power grid. Amid a time where utilities are seeking ways to make the supply and demand markets efficient, optimize the maintenance of immense stretches of assets across their coverage area...

The electrification of vehicles has swiftly gone from a curiosity to a trend to an inevitability, and few industries are poised to be quite as deeply impacted as the power sector. Utilities are already seeing the greatest amount of new load demand added to their portfolios in decades, and they'll continue to have requests to build out new transmission and distribution infrastructure just to meet t...

Under the Biden Administration, the U.S. Department of Energy has seen a revitalized focus towards solar energy as a means to transform the U.S. power grid. Recently, the Department put out the Solar Futures Study which outlined what was needed to get solar generation to 45% of the nation's power mix by mid-century, highlighting that doing so was not a pipe dream but was actually technologically a...

The early days of the electric power industry began with the installation of small microgrids that connected energy consumers with nearby sources of generation, but as the industry grew the economies of scale dictated that central power plants and massive webs of interconnected grids were the best way to industrialize and grow. In recent years, however, energy sector thought leaders have been push...

The electrification of transportation is coming whether or not utilities are ready for it. A decade ago, the prospect of vehicles being plugged in every night was enough to keep grid operators up at night at the thought of such an unprecedented load increase, but today the forward-looking utility should instead be looking to the EV revolution as an opportunity and not a threat. At least that's the...

Through pressure from federal and international governments to market forces, the move towards a carbon-free power sector seems to be on a critical path. The need to decarbonize and replace fossil fuels with cleaner energy sources is close to undeniable at this time, but as anyone who spends time in the thick of debates in the utility sector (including those taking place every day in the Energy Ce...

Too often, the utility industry looks at the buildings sector as simply customers of the power companies, but thanks to rapidly advancing technology and innovative leaders buildings can now be looked at as assets in their own right. Tapping into opportunities like demand response, energy efficiency, on-site generation and storage, and the aggregation of these and other features means that building...

The landscape encompasses a wide variety of power providers, and while investor-owned utilities are often the largest and most influential, it’s the smaller players that may be setting the bar for customer care. Specifically, electric cooperatives recognize their end consumers not just as ratepayers, but indeed as members of the electric co-op, and the smaller and more local nature of these power...

This latest episode of the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast brings back two of our audience favorites to discuss a topic that’s been rapidly evolving and penetrating the market since we last had them in the podcast booth. Pat Hohl and Bill Meehan join up tackle the state of GIS and Digital Twins in the utility sector today, highlighting the technological advancements that are truly changi...

In the Energy Central Community, July is all about customer care and everything that means and encompasses for the utility industry. In that light, this episode seeks to highlight the unique relationship between a wholesale power agency and its member utilities, the customer experience not through the lens of the end consumer and its utility but the relationship between the power producer and the...

This week’s episode of the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast dives into the world of infrastructure, and specifically the management of assets found underground that transport our water, gas, and electrons. Asset management at the utility is big and serious business, having lasted in some cases for a century or longer buried deep underneath the ground. Accurately tracking those assets and...

This week, the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast turns back to the world of Digital Twins as we welcome back a return guest to the podcast: Brent Jensen, a sales engagement director with Bentley Systems. Bent and his team at Bentley have been hard at work transforming the digital sphere of the utility industry, specifically focused on the grid modernization implications of digital twins an...

Lots of utilities are sharing their clean energy goals for 2030, 2040 and beyond, as a continued focus on climate change and decarbonization appropriate takes center stage. But declaring vague clean energy targets decades in advance can, arguably, be the easy part of the process, the real challenge comes in living up to those promises and remaining accountable to investors, customers, and regulato...

This week on the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast, we’re tackling the utility climate discussion from the angle of resilience and adaptation. Where most utility climate discussions deal with emissions reductions, decarbonization, and other methods to try to prevent the worst climate change chain reactions, many in the industry are recognizing that, regardless of how swiftly we implement t...

Today’s episode of the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast brings in a guest who’s long overdue for an appearance in Doug Houseman, a Principal Consultant at 1898 & Co., a Burns & McDonnell division. Doug’s insights into the utility in much sought after, and his writing in the Energy Central community has been undoubtedly prolific as he seeks to impart wisdom to the next generation of power...

The U.S. power grid is getting intense focus from all angles these days, from federal initiatives to spend billions of dollars to upgrade the grid infrastructure all the way down to local projects looking to harden transmission infrastructure. Regardless of the scale or lens, though, a pervading type of solution continues to be identified that can accomplish a myriad of goals: the microgrid. Micro...

As the latest entry into our Leadership Series, the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast was joined by Mark Gabriel, the outgoing CEO of Western Area Power Administration. Mark is passionate about all things grid, and his illustrious career across the utility sector has given him the type of wisdom and insights that have allowed him to be one of the forefront voices for the state of the grid...

Continuing on Energy Central’s focus on innovation for this whole month, this week’s episode of the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast recognizes the external factors that are bringing innovation to the forefront. From the three D’s of decarbonization, decentralization, and digitalization to the unexpected pivots that utilities across the country had to embrace in the face of the COVID-19 p...

In the business world, innovation has risked turning into more of a buzzword than an actual guiding principle. But in a rapidly evolving industry like utilities, innovation can have real impact on operations, on customers, and on the way the entire sector is set up. As such, innovation departments have sprung up across various power providers, seeking out new ways to modernize grid operations, to...

Hydropower can be rightfully considered the oldest, original renewable energy source. And from the use of waterwheels centuries through to modern marvels like the Hoover Dam, it’s remained a steady, reliable, and affordable form of clean energy generation. But despite its relatively stellar record of providing electricity and energy storage, particularly in areas like the Pacific Northwest, hydrop...

The HR departments across the utility sector are facing numerous challenges as they continue to develop and build up the workforce of the power sector. Not only is there the brain drain being experienced as career-long employees continue to hit retirement age at record pace, but recruiting for the best and brightest out of school is pitting utilities against Silicon Valley, big tech, and more. Tha...

Taking a new job is always a big moment filled with excitement and nerves, but imagine taking over as CEO with the company with which you’ve spent nearly two decades. Now imagine also doing so amid a global pandemic and economic crisis. That’s the situation that Garrick Rochow found himself in just a few months ago when he became the CEO of Consumers Energy, the public utility that provides power...