SPEAKER_00: 0:07

Resilience is a topic that doesn't get a whole lot of coverage on the customer side of the grid, but it's something that we definitely think of when things don't go right. Whether it's hearkening back to the California wildfires or the big freeze that happened in Texas, let's face it, when the power isn't on, you'll be the first ones to hear about it if you're listening to this podcast. So today we have a very, very special guest with us. He's going to talk about resilience, AI, and how we can build a community-first resilience perspective. And that is Don McPhail. And he is the vice president of market development for North America for eSmart Systems, which is a global leader in AI-powered software for the digitalization and intelligent asset management of critical energy infrastructure. With that, I'm Ian Perderer, and let's get this podcast started. Don, welcome to the podcast. It's so great to have you here.

SPEAKER_01: 1:10

Yeah, thanks, Ian. Great to be here. I appreciate the time to chat today.

SPEAKER_00: 1:14

Yeah, absolutely. Can you give us a little background of your career, sort of where you started and what led you to eSmart systems?

SPEAKER_01: 1:24

Sure. Yeah. I mean, I've had the pleasure of working in the industry for almost 20 years. I started on the utility side as an electrical engineer in Australia and worked my way through different operational and asset management roles in Australia and the UK, and then had the pleasure of switching then to the vendor side about seven, eight years ago when I moved to the US. And I've my career's gone across everything from solar and VPPs and DERMS to the intersection of IT and OT and just the overarching transformation of the energy system. So yeah, really interesting opportunities and a lot of change along the way as well. And then my reason to join eSmart was really eSmart sits at this nexus of the digitization of the grid to enable utilities to be better equipped for the need for resiliency, particularly with changing climate and more extreme weather events and that. And so our software, Grid Vision, is an AI-powered tool that enables utilities to take the information they get from the field and particularly around imagery that comes in with inspections and that, but then build a digital asset of their grid and then be able to make decisions around the health, the risk down to the component level of their grid and use that to inform their operational and capital investments as well as how they plan for and manage their response to extreme weather events like wildfires and storms and that.

SPEAKER_00: 3:19

And I feel resilience usually gets covered as a sort of like a bifurcated conversation where there's generation transmission conversations happening and then there's distribution grid conversations happening. And I'm hoping what we can do in our conversation today when we're talking about resilience and the impact of climate-driven events and things like this is have a bit of a conversation that tries to bridge those gaps and talk about it in a way where it's not this or that. We're really looking at it a holistic perspective. And I feel like that's where eSmart Systems is really uniquely positioned because you guys do take that approach to your work. So if you've been paying attention to the news, the frequency and severity of climate events, climate-driven events, whether we're talking about wildfires, storms, droughts, flooding, sleet, hail, it's increasing. It's getting more severe. And in some cases, I think many people would agree more unpredictable. So talk to me a little bit about the last, let's say the last five to ten years. What are you seeing now versus what you might have seen at the beginning of your career?

SPEAKER_01: 4:43

Yeah, I mean it's a great question. And I I think your spot on there too, around you know, the overarching infrastructure and particularly the energy infrastructure is really invisible to greater society until it's front page news, because you know, either something went wrong or it's just the fact of like everyone wants to know in those sort of disaster moments how we're getting lights back on and getting back to normal and that as well. See this sort of time and time again. And and particularly though the the residual, I would say, is the communities that are impacted. And I say this as someone that lives in Colorado and has had our share of uh wildfires in that, for instance, it does linger because you see the impacts afterwards, which take many years to recover from in that as well. But I mean, to your point on maybe that contrast of the last five, 10 years and how things have definitely increased versus like the earlier stages of my career. I started at a utility, Ergon Energy, in Australia, that supplies a massive swath of the state of Queensland in Australia. And a lot of that sits in the tropics. And so cyclones are a regular occurrence every year. It's not as a case of like if there will be a cyclone, but rather like how many and at what severity will those cyclones be. And so because of that, that the utility and and every every role in the company was a well-oiled machine to knowing that there is this predictability around having cyclones and what that would then entail in terms of both the investments that need to be made to help mitigate the issues, but equally into like the community and you know, the people that live in the community, but also the other support systems as part of that to help be resilient when those disasters happen. And then once the disaster happened, how to kick it into gear and to be able to respond to those. In those sort of locations, you know, because it's so predictable that you will have those disasters, you can afford to that. I think the emergence, though, of both wildfires and the severity of those wildfires, but also the frequency of them happening. And then equally the, you know, big windstorm type events, particularly we see here in the east in the US, is really starting to catch those areas that were previously never really having to think so much about resiliency in that regard. You know, things at front of mind were safety, affordability, and reliability, but resiliency in these sort of extreme events really sat outside of reliability. And so then that's now having to trigger this need to respond. And so as a result, a lot of the ones that have occurred have caught both communities and our infrastructure on the back foot when they happened. You know, I think the most famous one is probably the 2018 campfire in California and just how that wasn't something that just happened overnight. There were many decades of decisions in that that sort of led to both the cause of it and then the ability or lack there to re respond. And there's a great book, California Burning, to read as a plug just around like that scenario all happening around it. But we're now seeing that, you know, very much in the wildfire case go across the western part of the US and seeing those sort of events happen. I sort of, you know, to my point mentioned living in Colorado, I lived through the uh the Marshall Fire and just how that has even just shifted the needs for in for my local utility, Excel Energy, around being able to respond and be proactive around both how to prevent risk, but also be able to respond when those disasters inevitably do happen because it's less of a if it all happened, it's when it happens, and how do we reduce the severity and ensure the community is well equipped as part of it. And that probably that last point, the community is how I see it mostly changing, is thinking about infrastructure less as a separate entity and more as a as a piece within the community. And so the ones that sort of do it well aren't just thinking about how do I make sure my, you know, in a vacuum infrastructure is able to either avoid the disaster from happening or causing a disaster and be able to get the lights back on. But how do I make sure that the various other emergency services teams are equipped and that we're working together to understand both the preparedness and then the response with it? And then how do I understand from the community leaders and my broader customer base that they're well equipped with the information and education and steps to take so that I'm prioritizing what matters most to them, but also equipping them so that they can make decisions and that sort of stuff around it and be well informed throughout the life cycle of a uh a natural disaster and that as well.

SPEAKER_00: 9:00

Yeah, you kind of touched on this the way that the grid is traditionally set up and the way we typically go about our mitigation plans, the way we have approached resilience has to change. And so if you could dig in a little bit more on the current grid state and its threshold for disruption, like what does that actually look like? And the traditional mitigation plans, do they do they meet the requirements for the level of disruption we're seeing, or are they uh deficient?

SPEAKER_01: 9:39

Yeah, I think that's a that's a good question. Like I would say that generally speaking, a lot of the infrastructure is rigid in in how it can respond if it hasn't had to do those, you know, continual, I will have these events and they're gonna occur. Like I sort of used the the tropics in Australia type example, but the same applies down into you know the the Gulf and that sort of stuff as well in the US, where you can have that predictability around storm seasons with it. You know, there's a combination of like when I think about the infrastructure, there's both the things that can do to help prevent contributing to the disaster. So in the wildfire case, there's a risk there where today, I know Calfire produces data that shows that 10% of wildfires are triggered by electrical infrastructure. But when those wildfires do occur from electrical infrastructure, they have an outsized impact on the severity and the spread associated with it. So the first step there is like how how to prevent the being a contributor or an ignition source of wildfires. The second part then, though, is that when these incidences do happen, how to minimize the severity of it or the extent that outages happen. And so again, this gets into investments that are now starting to happen more around like sectionalizers and other switching equipment that can help reduce the outage size, whether that's like public safety power shutoffs as a tool in utilities for wildfires, being able to reduce the spread of those, because while they're an effective tool, you know, you use them too many times and people will very much pretty quickly get upset about being without power for multiple hours or days a year and having that uncertainty around it as a preventive mechanism. Similar in windstorm and hurricane and those sort of environments as well, having to lose power because of something happening potentially tens to hundreds miles away, knocking out critical backbones and that. And so seeing that sort of shift around how to reduce the uh severity of it. But ultimately, I think the biggest transformation is happening is, you know, in the case of wildfires, we see these things we're called wildfire management plans that pretty well most states west of the Missouri now have a requirement for or have started to require them. And the good thing there is that it, you know, encourages utilities to be able to look across like multiple time horizons in the sense of like, what are the prevention and mitigation activities I need to do so that I can avoid the risk of it happening and the severity of these events as well, whether I'm you know a cause or just a they happen around my infrastructure. Then there's that time horizon of when, okay, something happens, how do I respond and make sure my response is really effective? Everything from you know the situational awareness of the disaster happening as well as the response in that moment and the information that goes out and working together with those frontline resources. And then post-event, what's my recovery, what's my recovery like mechanism that kicks into place to be able to restore energy back to communities and get communities back to a level of normality as quickly as possible. But also, you know, what is my long-term investments I'm trying to make to make sure that the infrastructure is trending over many years towards a more resilient system. And that last point being critical because if we go and spend a ton of money in the short term to go and make the most resilient system as possible, it's really then ultimately going to hurt communities in the sense of sure we can keep the lights on even more through these disasters and have all the capabilities there. But we're now going to make maybe the system completely unaffordable for anyone to access and have a whole heap of other community challenges as a result of that reaction as well.

SPEAKER_00: 13:14

The threshold for disruption, I think, is quite low. And if anything, I think the tolerance for disruption is getting lower from communities, especially in the the day and age where we are in, where everyone is online and so many people work from home now and they're just reliant on electricity in ways they just never were before. Whereas, you know, back before COVID, most people would be commuting to a different neighborhood. So yeah, it would be slightly disruptive if you woke up in the morning and let's say there was a public shutoff and you know you had to go to Starbucks and the neighbor and a neighborhood away to get your coffee on the way to work instead of making it at home. That's a kind of disruption that you know you can live with. But if you're working from home and all of a sudden you wake up in the morning, there's a public power shutoff and your laptop battery's dead, it's a much different conversation. And I wonder, are like when utilities are looking at this resilience planning and they're thinking about how they go about it, are they really do they have that people first mindset? Are they really thinking from that, you know, customer perspective? Are they trying to put themselves in the shoes of the customer and that sort of design thinking approach? Or is resilience planning still very much a centralized operation where you're really looking at it from a poles and wires perspective? And what does the system need in that sense?

SPEAKER_01: 14:46

Yeah, I think utilities are full of a lot of like operational type people, engineers, people out in the field, and that sort of thing as well. And I say this as someone that started their career as an engineer. And I remember when I first started my career having a planning engineer I worked alongside, who had been there for 40 plus years, making a comment, which was tongue-in-cheek, but probably had some truth to how he actually did think. Like we would have this perfect grid if it wasn't for all these customers. And I think that is still actually reflective of how some people can actually think about it. And so, to your point, like the way that resiliency, the way that like infrastructure broadly has to be approached is really around this like people-first mindset to it. And we see this in things like thinking about COVID. There was this resiliency piece around how do we make sure our customers are able to access energy to be able to afford their bills, to be able to get through a tough time. And you saw a lot of those like customer-facing frontline people, as well as the teams behind them, thinking about how to adapt the utility messaging, their programs, et cetera, to support customers through that moment. The same thing can be then transferred into these extreme weather events and the resiliency associated with them around it as well. And so that can be everything from the piece around like how do I get the information around to community groups and to customers around from the consultation stage, where do I make the investments? How do I think about how what communication I have to these groups, the customers, how do they want to access that information, what sort of notifications they need, even understanding like where my vulnerable customers are that need, particularly because of health reasons and that, and knowing that they need to keep the lights on because they could impact medical equipment and factor those into plans. Then when the events happen, like how I respond and get information out and have that in a timely way, how do I have the tools and investments I'm making to make that available, but also beyond just the pure digital, because if the power's out and that impacts their Wi-Fi, but equally the cell providers and that as well, they might not be able to access the information. So even going back true to old school techniques like the radio and all that sort of thing, or other community word-of-mouth type pieces to get those information out. And then in that recovery, you know, there's a lot of pieces where I think about in those post-recovery moments where the lack of information can often make people think that nothing's happening, even if the people are working really hard behind the scenes to get the power back on. And so you can avoid a lot of community angst by having just really good, timely and transparent and authentic information. Like drawing from a local experience here, I remember when we had our first public safety power shutoff in our in our Boulder County sort of area. Everyone was really happy that was happening. But then the information to be able to know, well, how long will I be off for? Am I one of the impacted people was really sort of mixed with it. And instead of the necessarily available tools being the way that people were getting information, they were resorting to some Facebook groups and like community groups. And that's you know, useful as a channel, but it does also reflect that the technical execution of it might have been good, but the community engagement and awareness and information execution had opportunity for growth.

SPEAKER_00: 17:51

100%. There is that level of education that even when things are not wrong, could go a long way to helping communities understand what's happening and why, what the expectations are, what the priorities are when certain things do happen. You know, you can make the case that critical community infrastructure, like hospitals, shelters, fire police, et cetera, everyone's going to get those things, get prioritized first to get the power back on to these. And then, you know, once those are settled and those locales are mitigated, you move on to the other things. I almost wondered how what is considered critical community infrastructure may or may not be changing. Let's take like Orlando and other cities in the South that are pursuing municipal electrification of their transit fleets. Is a fast-charging substation? Is that critical infrastructure? People probably don't think of it that way. Same thing for data centers. You know, there's a lot of discourse around data centers generally in their relationships with their communities, but you know, do you see that umbrella of what is considered community critical infrastructure expanding? And if so, what are things that would be encompassed by that sort of categorization when you're looking at resilience planning?

SPEAKER_01: 19:13

Yeah, I mean, there's still the underlying piece of the hierarchy of needs and focusing on those things like hospital, shelter, fire police, and getting the grocery store back on and people being able to have access to food and help bring some of that normality and that to it also acts as a bit of a community hub because people are seeing each other. You can make people feel safe and secure around having access to food and necessities. If you can get that sort of normality back into grocery stores, community centers, churches as well, like they're the places where people can feel a connection to their community. But then to your point around connectivity and you know, and data centers and that sort of piece as well. There's a lot of you know, great technology that has existed for many years now around both mobile generation and mobile telecommunication hubs and that sort of thing as well. And getting them out and having those mobile stations around is another really key response piece that happens. And as well, people can come out, they can charge their phone, they can get access, they can message loved ones to let them know they're safe, they can coordinate and all that as well. And that can, like in those first 24 hours post-disaster, be really impactful while buying time to get the other infrastructure back on. But this then starts to get into the piece of like having distributed energy resources and having those pieces that are in place so that a hospital, a telecommunication center, even fuel stations in that as well, can run in an island capacity to be able to start getting that, those services back on for a couple of days or even a few hours each day. You know, you're sort of mentioning about fast charging stations and getting that power back on into those high traffic community areas can help get people so they can keep running their cars. That human element, both for the community, but also the human element of the uh infrastructure and utility side is really critical to bouncing back after a disaster.

SPEAKER_00: 21:00

I mean, this is incredibly complex stuff to even begin to attempt to quantify or capture the complexity of on the ground situations happening in a catastrophic event, whether that be like a wildfire or a flood or something like that. You've got so many stakeholders, you've got so many assets, you have so many channels of communication happening. And in the midst of all this, when a utility is considering that they have their investment plans, and somehow they need to take these plans that they're working out on paper and translate that into a better lived experience for communities in a time when emotions are high, people are fraught, expectations are constantly shifting. Are there utilities out there that are doing a good, a really good job of this? And what are some, and if so, like what are some of the things that they're doing that maybe other utilities could look at that would help them in their own process?

SPEAKER_01: 22:08

Yeah, I mean, I think about sort of two pieces of this. You know, there's the adage of failing to plan is planning to fail. So the first is utilities that are really good at not just doing planning to check a box, but actually like living and thinking about how this is actually gonna help me. The same with any other disaster preparedness planning in that as well is how do I use this as both a tool that's gonna help me, but also make sure that I have my other support systems, my other interagency groups all singing from the same hymn sheet going into these. And we know our roles, we know when the time comes, how that's gonna work. And then in that actual operational piece, like obviously every every utility, every agency that ever goes through a disaster will always say, like, oh, there's so many things that we learned, there's so many things we want to do differently next time, regardless of whether they are a high performing one or completely on their back foot in the response. And so, you know, as part of that is also the practice of having those mock disaster days and doing that kind of war gaming element of it around these events so that you can practice with the other agencies and your other peers to be able to respond in it, both for the bodies and that they'll be a part of it, but equally bringing in outsiders that are maybe experiencing and living it elsewhere to learn from them as well. So, in in that kind of like preparedness piece, that's something, you know, again, I draw back to my earlier stages in my career working in Australia, being able to tie take part in those and really learn a lot from both the preparedness work that we would do and how that would inform our planning as well as our you know capital investment planning and the cases we would make to regulators and all that sort of thing. And then, you know, when you get into the actual event, having that really like strong and cohesive leadership across the response in that as well. The utilities that sort of do that well have that experience of they know their roles, they know the roles and the leaders of the other groups and agencies and how to respond to it. But I think about like how the California utilities have shifted because of that wake up in in 2018 with the campfire and seeing how you know, thinking about like public safety power shutoffs, just how they were more of a blunt tool initially, versus like the thinking and planning and the information sharing that they're kind of doing now to get that into a well-oiled machine around how they work with other agencies. The last sort of comment I just would make on this too is there's this element around the community benefit to it, but you know, being reactive is expensive. If you wait for an event to happen and then do something about it, you're not just gonna be spending more on CapEx, but you're also gonna be penalized on insurance and credit rating, which is gonna make it more expensive to borrow money to ensure your your operations. And that ultimately is gonna hurt you know, for investor and utilities, their dividends, but equally back to rates for customers as well. So living into this and being proactive is ultimately rewarded as well.

SPEAKER_00: 24:58

Yeah, yeah. And you know, you're talking about the sort of the emergency drills or the disaster planning scenarios that they do. And I just as a as an aside have to ask, are you a parks and recreation fan by chance? Did you ever watch that show?

SPEAKER_01: 25:10

Yeah, I've seen I've definitely seen all seasons of parks and recognition.

SPEAKER_00: 25:14

Then you remember, you'll remember the one where the town has to do the disaster drill and Leslie's Leslie Nope is supposed to be the emergency czar. And I remember she pulls out this huge binder and just slams it on the desk. And then all it took was just one person to throw a wrench in it, and all of a sudden the plan went out the window. And so if you ever if you're ever wanting to get a humorous slightly uh detached from reality view of what the complexities of disaster planning scenarios and drills might look like, go watch that episode. But, you know, when you're talking about disaster planning and disaster drills and things from a grid perspective, there are so many fragmentations within our systems. There are gaps that exist. There are two things that really pop into my head that are very unique to this subject that we're talking about. And the first one is visibility. I think especially when you get down to individual assets, you're talking about the distribution side and things like that. Of course, we have virtual power plants that are out there and running. You have people who have their own wall batteries, or maybe they have rooftop solar installed, things like that. And there are varying degrees of visibility you have there, but that's further complicated even within the utility, because the data from the generation and transmission side, if you're a vertically integrated utility, is probably in a separate place from what's happening over here on the customer programs and the distribution side of the house. So, what what are the real world impacts that you're seeing by that one issue not being addressed? And the other one I would like you to talk about is you know, what costs we're facing because we have that fragmented planning, because we have the fragmented structure within the utilities. Like, what are the costs that we're paying for, you know, literally and figuratively by not fixing that scenario?

SPEAKER_01: 27:06

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. When I started my career, the first time I went into a control room that was for distribution was still running pinboards. So there wasn't even a digital representation of hundreds of thousands of miles of network. It was all just pinboards and and printouts. And so, you know, assuming that any of that was sufficiently accurate, let alone if something happened and you needed to transfer that information to another place, like definitely a huge challenge. You know, fast forward to today, a lot of utilities have invested in GIS and ADMS and those sort of systems to have a sense on like where their assets are. But a time and time again, we always hear it around like, well, I think the assets are here, but they could be off by several hundred feet. I know what voltage I have, but I don't actually know what components, what type of infrastructure is out there, all of those sort of elements, particularly in the distribution world. And then even just having the assets in the wrong spot or the wrong asset types there can have a pretty significant impact on the risk calculations around what will be my interaction, my infrastructure with a wildfire or wind storm event. Am I at risk of actually even causing or a being an ignition source for a wildfire or causing outages as a result of that as well? Like that data being off by a bit can have a pretty significant impact. The element of knowing what is the inherent ability and resiliency can have a huge impact in equally thinking about the efficiency of how we invest as a society into the infrastructure in that as well, like knowing where those areas are that have the potential to support themselves for a period of time and knowing how long they can survive that for and what size of community they can support in it is really critical so that you can know where to prioritize certain areas and deprioritize other areas because they have that inherent or built-in resiliency in that as well. I mean, to your point on VPPs and microgrids and that, generally, because a lot of that has come along in recent years, we have pretty good data in where they exist, maybe not what their actual like ratings and that sort of stuff are for, but but that bringing those together is probably the lower hanging fruit of knowing where the resiliency is. The bit that's more challenging, and I see this particularly with eSmart systems and the role that we can support utilities in, is is because so much of our electrical infrastructure was built decades ago, a lot of it is over 40 years old. There is just a real lack of like digitization of that grid. Transmission is a bit better, but distribution, where is most of what we see outside in our poles and wires and that sort of thing really lacks that data visibility. And if it does, it is really in those disparate systems. We hear time and time again how asset management teams would love access to data that an operational team has, but it's sitting in a SharePoint folder somewhere or in someone's like hacked up sort of spreadsheet or other tool that they've created to fill their job need, but doesn't really transfer across other teams in that as well. And so when we come out and work with clients, a lot of it is just even taking the Virtual inspections that they're doing by getting imagery of their grid through a drone and helicopter data capture is both that step of like assessing the health so they can do operational maintenance, but actually converting that into a digital representation of the grid so that they then know where do I have particular types of components that are more at risk of either, in the case of wildfires causing a wildfire, in the case of hurricanes and even wildfires, more exposed to breaking or failing under strong winds, so that I can prioritize either mitigating those going out and replacing them proactively without having to do, you know, massive just guess guessw of where they exist and either missing them or over uh or spending more money than's needed. And then when these sort of failures in that happen, knowing what was out there too, so I can get a faster response because I know I have an imagery of what was there beforehand, so I can assess the scene and get the lights back on much more quickly as well. But these sort of tools can help make it easier for teams to be talking the same language.

SPEAKER_00: 30:59

Yeah. And I think just to set a little context for people who might be listening who are, you know, and new to the industry, just what it means to have 40 plus year old infrastructure. I mean, we're talking 40 years ago. I wasn't even alive. And just thinking about all the changes that have happened since then. Just put yourself in the utility worker's head for a second and try and visualize what they're having to deal with. You've got the disparate realities of the old infrastructure you're dealing with, and then on one hand, and then in the other hand, you're holding virtual power plants, and somehow you have to make all this stuff work together. You know, just the thought of it is a little bit mind-boggling. So, with that reality in mind, what is the best way forward? You know, what's a utility to do? What's a third party to do with this reality?

SPEAKER_01: 31:51

Yeah, there's an adage that I really like, which is the best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago, the second best time is now. And the same applies here. Like you have to start somewhere. You can't solve the past and whatever decisions were made to get you here, but you control this moment right now. And the best thing to do is to start to talk across the groups and break down those silos, whether that's an internal or or across like agencies and external to community groups, et cetera, and to and to start that now and be that force of change. Like that's something that's very much in the power of anyone in the industry that plays that role today. So thinking about this and this case of data, like we we really sort of coach and and support your utilities in taking three steps. The first is to get all of their data and think about it in a structured format. Think about the sort of standardized way that they want new data coming in, particularly they want to convert that existing data. So it's gonna be that standardized approach. The second step then is to like centralize all of that data into a unified platform. So you're now like breaking down the silos, and equally any new data coming in that's starting to populate is coming into that central place. And then the third part is the time series element of it, like keeping the data and then showing how things change over time is really key. And so this can apply to so many different types of data and types of use cases. But if you sort of take those three steps, then you're able to then build the intelligence on top of the data and actually derive insights because you're all actually looking at the same data set. You've broken down the walls to be able to access it, those silos, and then you're able to derive unique insights from it as well, and you're going to get better efficiency out of it. So to this point, we're sort of talking about with resiliency, you know, and thinking about the infrastructure piece of it. Again, like using the eSmart example of capturing that data out in the field with imagery, bringing it back in, structuring it around, combining it with the GIS data, combining it with the other enterprise resource plan and asset management data, and then using that to then see where do I have discrepancies to then recorrect a lot of those systems that the teams are relying on based on that data coming in from the field, is you're then able to make informed decisions around from like a asset management perspective. Okay, I can understand that there's this vegetation issues or outage issues that are my OM teams are having to spend a ton of time and effort on to try and help reduce the risk of outages or the risk of wildfires. Okay, I can see that if I make this investment here, I, you know, I can help reduce this OM saving, but I'm also going to improve my own resiliency because I'm converting to a covered conductor or undergrounding. And I know that that's going to be an area where there's the highest impact because it goes down and connects to a community on the other end of that that has a poor resiliency right now. And so you can sort of see those three different data points or those three different use cases coming together, all working from the exact same data, but make decisions that are beneficial across all of those versus each group making a decision in silo. So, you know, that centralization, that standardization, and then building up how things change over time is really critical to understanding that sort of situational awareness and that risk management associated with it.

SPEAKER_00: 34:58

So if you've got the centralized data, everything's where it needs to be, there is still the issue of thinking more holistically. And so it sounds to me like if you're taking a whole ecosystem approach to resiliency, you know, if we're talking generation, transmission, distributions, VvPs, programs, microgrids. You know, when it comes to planning in these things, who's driving the bus? Or is that analogy even appropriate anymore? Does this become, does the resiliency become something in the planning process that becomes a shared burden within the utility? Or is that still something very centralized that's happening?

SPEAKER_01: 35:42

Yeah, I think this is uh this is one of those things where like ultimately, you know, whoever owns the infrastructure, regardless of what that infrastructure is, whether it's the electricity infrastructure, like the poles and wires, whether it's the generation, whether it's the community infrastructure, like they're going to be accountable for their piece of it. So it is going to be just distributed by nature. That's that's how our society works in the Western world. But I think the the key here is that information can be knowledge and power that if you're able to share and make those things transparent, then you're able to give that broader situational awareness to the other groups so that they are all working from the same data set. And so again, like I think back to working in asset management and doing like doing integrated distribution planning to sort of think about how the system needed to evolve over the next sort of five years. And every single time that I worked on that, there would be plans that make based on the internal data sets and bringing them together to work out what's the right investments, the priorities to manage those different risks and that and be efficient and effective with it. But then going out and talking to the community groups and not just talking to one, you know, collective's town hall or something like that, but actually going around to the different regions and talking about what was important to that individual community. Obviously, a lot of it comes back to those like levers of safe, reliable, affordable, but the variables around like how much what one community considers affordable will be different to another, what one community considers around being able to support clean motivations will be different than another, but resiliency is another one. And so taking those plans out and talking to the different community groups or also bringing their plans is what enables that alignment around getting to an understanding of what each party intentions are, and then equally what is their optimal plan from it. I guess to answer your sort of question, like by nature it's gonna be distributed, but it has to be it has to have that human-to-human sort of contact to be able to have those discussions with it. And ultimately working from accurate and extensive data and making that available across parties to be able to reduce or remove those silos or uh those barriers is what's gonna enable people to be more aligned and make the right decisions or feel like they can make more consistent decisions with that as well.

SPEAKER_00: 37:53

But not only that, I mean, once you once you have the customers and the community engaged, it only serves to increase the trust that they have in you because they are bought in to what you have presented. They feel like they had a say, they had a hand in what was crafted. But I wonder if once we've got these plans and then it comes time to execute with these resilience plans, when the emergency happens, you've got all this centralized data now, right? The next logical step is you're gonna have a utility that's going to bring in an AI solution. And this is where the rubber will meet the road. And talk to me, maybe a little bit, and maybe give a couple of examples of okay, in the realm of that real-time decision making and real-time communication. What sort of role can AI play when you have all this data in a usable way? And what can't AI do? Like, what should someone not expect AI to be able to do in these kinds of scenarios?

SPEAKER_01: 38:56

Yeah, I mean, good question. So we are not, generally speaking, we are not short on data. We're generally swimming in data. So having sufficient data is not a problem. It's it's being able to actually use it and not be overwhelmed by it. And so there's kind of two, the first sort of two parts. So one is the bit around like what I spoke about with the centralization and the standardization and bringing it together. Another part of that is also making sure that we also have like confidence in the data that's there. But then being able to apply this AI layer on top of it, there's this element or this fear that can sometimes come up around like AI replacing people or replacing humans. And there's a lot, I think, that is like sort of misunderstood with that, in that the sense that AI can actually help us be more efficient and more effective with the data. And so, you know, when I think about a lot of these activities, there's a lot of analysis, a lot of like risks and scenarios and all those sort of things that can be done. And if you were to rely purely on humans, you could you just couldn't do it. Like the sheer volume of people that would be required or human hours is extensive. It can also take this sort of you know tedious and mundane activity of going through and doing those scenarios, creating the analysis and all that from it, and do that very fast. You know, it doesn't sleep. So it's going to be able to turn it around very quickly with the processing car we have at our fingertips today to be able to come back with those scenarios and then actually do those informed analyses to be able to make decisions. And the cost of it has come down significantly as well. And these sort of tools are available to anyone that has access to the data essentially. So that's great. It's kind of like democratizing, even for businesses. The second part then is that you're able to have an order trail of those decisions and that AI can help you sort of think through all right, I have this picture of like what my assets are out in there, where is the asset health and risk associated with it? And then how does that overlay with the AI determining what are my wildfire or winds events, risks that are overlaying with that from an environmental perspective? And then combine that with insights around the community needs and resiliency in that as well, and then inform where do I go and put my next dollar of investment that's going to have the most outsize impact. Then when you get into that, like, okay, something's happened. I'm now in the actual operational need of it as well. Those can be very overwhelming moments, regardless of how experienced and trained are the operational teams in that. And so AI can help simplify down to like what are the actual next action I need to take and how are those risks either changing, either increasing or decreasing at what rate to help simplify the cognitive burden for the humans in those in those roles, in those extreme events. And then post-event, again, this is where AI can then help you recover from it as well by knowing like what is the inherent risk, how did my assets perform, and where am I best now to go and make investments post-event to recover as all as well as avoid the situation happening?

SPEAKER_00: 41:42

So if I'm a utility, I'm listening to all of this and I'm thinking, okay, this is all this is all great. I'm gonna start tomorrow. Let's give a final closing thought for them. Like if you have to give an elevator pitch for this, because they need to go back and sell the use of AI and their resilience planning, what's that 60-second pitch they can give to a person they need to get on board?

SPEAKER_01: 42:05

Yeah, uh it's a great question there. I mean, resiliency is all about protecting the people and the industry is we have the privilege of being here to serve our communities. And so that's you know, that's that's the great thing I think about being in this industry is that we're ultimately here to serve the community. So that's I guess the fundamental piece of it in terms of then where to start and and you know, that build vice buy in that as well. I mean, again, kind of like regardless of what the past is, like starting now and championing it is really critical. Thinking about those sort of time horizons and doing that score of like, where do I sit in the ability to plan for it versus respond in the moment versus being able to recover from it is really key. And the way that we sort of like coach with clients, particularly from an e-smart systems perspective, is taking that step towards like the digitization of the existing activities you might already be doing and bringing that together into a tool to then be able to make informed decisions from it and getting access to it is really important that there's probably things you're already doing by just like getting that data together, getting it standalized and centralized, and then making it available across teams can have a huge win without having to necessarily make a big change or investment from it, and that it can then be the proof point or the evidence to then go and get all of the other cascading value from it as well. In terms of resiliency piece and the investment in AI, something that I like to sort of push on here is that we really need to think about these digital systems and AI as an asset and that we should be thinking about funding it in the same way that we would fund any of our other assets. You know, in the electrical system perspective, the poles, the wires, the steel, the substations, you know, we capitalize those as physical assets with a recovery of multiple years for it as well, because we recognize that they have multi-year lifespans and we want to recover those costs in a way that's more efficient and effective for both the asset owner as well as the communities that are paying the rates in that for it as well. And so we should be doing the same with these investments and these tools. So that's that's our sort of push there is like think about investing in them and treating them like an asset rather than just some you know cool piece of tech on the side, sort of thing, with it as well. But yeah, start now and be the champion for the change is the key.

SPEAKER_00: 44:16

Absolutely. I completely agree. Well, Don, thank you so much for joining us today on the Energy Bee Podcast, and we look forward to uh talking with you next time. Thank you so much. Thanks, Ian. It's been great.