Early this Spring, Energy Central put out a call to our community to nominate their peers, partners and colleagues that they felt deserved recognition for being Champions of Innovation in the Power Industry. As always, the community did not disappoint and we proudly announced recently the four Honorable Mentions and four Champions of Innovation. All this week in the lead up to the Special Issue on Innovation, Energy Central will be spotlighting each of those winners with sit-down interviews to learn more about their great work.
Please help us celebrate Amy’s and the other champions' successes by reading some of the insights garnered from these exclusive Innovation Champion Interviews, and we invite you to leave any questions you have in the comments below!
Energy Central is proud to present an exclusive interview with Amy Grice, Chief Operating Officer at Peninsula Light Company (PenLight) and a trailblazer in the utility sector, as one of our Champions of Innovation for 2024. Amy's remarkable journey from an intern at a municipal power company to a key leader at PenLight exemplifies the transformative power of forward-thinking and technological advancement in the utility industry.
Throughout her career, Amy has navigated the complexities of transitioning from legacy SCADA systems to fully digital Advanced Distribution Management Systems (ADMS). Her innovative approach has not only improved grid reliability and outage management but also driven significant advancements in operational efficiency and resilience.
In this interview, Amy shares her insights on overcoming resistance to change, the impact of digital twins, and the importance of fostering a culture of innovation within utility companies. Her story is a testament to the critical role of innovation in shaping the future of the utility sector.
Energy Central: Congratulations on being selected as one of our Champions of Innovation for 2024! Can you tell us a bit about your role in the utility sector and how you got started in this space?
Amy Grice: I had an opportunity to work as an intern at a municipal power company during summer breaks from the electrical engineering program at Washington State University. Upon graduating, I was fortunate to interview for and accept an entry-level position with the same group. Internships are such a fantastic way to get the next generation excited to be part of our industry, and I hope to see more utilities continue to foster and offer those positions. Interns, sponsoring senior projects at the universities, and onboarding entry-level employees bring a new perspective and innovation is just as important as searching for senior and experienced employees and consultants. The next generation worker can foster change inherently.
From internship to first position, I have been part of the “latest and greatest” technology and the changes that are required throughout an organization to transition and adapt to industry evolvement. I started with the SCADA department during the rollout of remote terminal units (RTUs) to all distribution substations utilizing one of the first utility-owned fiber networks in the country specifically built for status and control of the electrical grid. From the beginning, I have been involved in next-generation technology, implementing solutions proven successful for other industries that utilities had yet to adopt. Towards the end of my time at the municipal, before transitioning to PenLight, we were one of the first to deploy 3G cellular-enabled fault detectors. That experience cemented for me the significant advancements available if utilities could overcome the resistance to change.
EC: Amy, your work at Peninsula Light Company has been instrumental in grid modernization and the integration of advanced OT and IT systems. Could you share some specific challenges you faced while transitioning from the legacy SCADA system to a fully digital ADMS system, and how you overcame them?
AG: People! Technology will always have challenges, but it has to constantly evolve. People, in general, do not like change. Even for something as simple as a name of a device or a line color on a screen, we especially love the phrase “but that’s the way we have always done it.” As we upgraded from our legacy, 20-year-old SCADA system using licensed serial-based radios, to our fully featured, triple redundant vertically integrated “single pane” Survalent ADMS system using 4G/LTE cellular modems on a private network, we upgraded from on-premise physical, dedicated services to a virtual environment in a data center located somewhere else. That was scary. Not being able to walk up and see the blinky lights on the servers while the communications lights flashed for TX/RX was unnerving. Our Operational Technology partner, Praece Consulting, facilitated an easier transition by suggesting we start with a local data center within a 20-minute drive from our office. After proving that we never, not even once, needed to visit the location in the first two years, PenLight moved the entire infrastructure to a data center over 1,000 miles away that is a geographically diverse location and outside of our potential earthquake zone. Partnering with the right technology vendors, then getting buy-in and support from all levels of an organization is critical. PenLight's CEO, Jafar Taghavi, PE, along with the board of directors, have always been supporting and encouraging of being a technologically advanced entity to the benefit of staff and members. Starting small and growing from pilots to trials to small rollouts before hitting a full-scale deployment was the right way for us. PenLight has an incredible team that transitioned well and has positioned ourselves to be incredibly flexible and looking to the future. Our culture now embraces change and asks “what if” instead of trying to stay status quo.
As a small electric and water cooperative with less than 90 employees, we rely on our crews after hours to have the tools and information available to respond quickly to outages throughout our territory including some areas where the roads are no longer passable due to landslides or other changes, but we must maintain service. As we built out the ADMS and associated field-facing tools, we have continued to push towards making the field work as safe and easy as possible. Our first thought when looking at new solutions and applications is: “at 2AM, in the wind and rain when it’s 32 degrees F, walking through the middle of the woods,” what option is best?
EC: You’ve led PenLight through significant technological advancements, including the creation of a digital twin for various systems. Can you elaborate on the impact this digital twin has had on outage management and overall grid reliability?
AG: PenLight’s response times have continued to improve, and the digital twin is a large part of that. As work is completed in the field, we are striving to have the full system model upgraded with the end goal to have those updates be in real time and allow the dispatcher to digitally enable at the exact time it is energized in the field. Currently, the ADMS and OMS system have temporary work cut in until the system model can be updated and propagated out to all other systems. We have enhanced our processes with the end goal in mind to have updates happening once every quarter or 6 months, to once a month. We continue to look for solutions and methods to advance towards the end goal.
As the engineering and design departments process work orders, and ESRI system model updates, we export and update out to over eight other systems including our ADMS, all through digital transformations to meet each system's unique needs. Through those export / import processes, we use the “pickiest” systems first and check for errors. At any step, if errors to the model are flagged, we fix the errors at the root in the ESRI system and start the entire process again. We are also able to update files and maps for partnering agencies such as call before you dig, and our local fire departments, to ensure those other entities also have the most up to date information. Our staff work tirelessly, with high standards, to ensure the data is of high integrity and accuracy. We do not trade speed for quality, or shortcuts that compromise safety during the physical work in the field and the same attitude and culture are applied and expected towards the digital twin.
Two examples of the benefits of the new technology are the speed at which we can deploy a new site and the resiliency capabilities that enable remote work.
Using the Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories (SEL) TEAMS and Blueframe, we can program, manage settings, and collect events remotely without an engineer onsite and fully documented and securely connected with password management. We have been able to standardize the installations, which we use SEL-651R and VIPER-ST for both overhead and underground line reclosers and switch cabinets and using ADMS tools, can have a site online and tested in approximately an hour after installation. We are on schedule to have over 300 line reclosers with full SCADA capabilities and integrated back to our ADMS and FLISR scheme on our 33 feeders by the end of 2025.
When we had to shut down due to COVID, the staff supporting and utilizing ADMS and associated infrastructure, closed up our laptops, drove home then hopped right back online. The only downtime for managing the electrical grid was the time it took to drive home. We had zero changes required for our field crews to access the system and zero impact to our members or response times. We use 2FA/MFA on all applications, VPNs and 24/7 monitoring for a cybersecurity-focused operational network including all end devices that access or view the data. We routinely push our software vendors to change security practices and are often told “no one else is asking for this.”
One of our hardest legacy mindsets to overcome is that reclosers must be set to reclose. We have invested in fully capable devices to allow for use as part of the fault location, isolation and restoration schemes (FLISR). Reclosers may or may not be set to reclose, but they have full sense and fault detection capabilities if or when they are needed. Future improvements we are anticipating is the automation of determining the coordination of the set groups for downstream reclosers, and this is one area where I could see Artificial Intelligence (AI) potentially having a role not just in the customer or marketing aspects of the utility industry but in real-time operations.
EC: Given PenLight’s unique geographical risks, such as wildlife interference, how have the advanced systems and data-driven strategies you’ve implemented helped in mitigating these risks and ensuring reliable power delivery to your customers?
AG: “Easy button!”
Our highlighted story for using our investment in a novel way with no additional costs or licenses was implementing an “easy button” on our ADMS that allows immediate settings change of all reclosers to a single shot operation. We created the button last year in mid-June after a small fire started from a car on one of the peninsulas we serve. We had to send crews to standby in the event the winds picked up and the fire could not be contained. Our only dispatcher was unavailable for the first hour and we needed a way to get all reclosers into non-reclose as quickly as possible once available in and could not afford time to have line crews to physically drive to each site. Within a couple of hours, we had an “easy button” that allowed dispatch quick control of all devices in the entire system. With the change in the summer weather to hot and dry with no rain for well over two months in the Pacific NW, we left the system in non-reclose all summer.
As an added check measure to ensure that no site accidentally was reset and enabled reclosing, we set up monitoring - every hour it searches for the reclose status point, and emails out a report alerting what location was enabled. Using data lake to provide a secondary check against the real time SCADA system allows for additional reporting and capabilities to monitor the electrical grid 365/24/7 without manually having to verify each site, or create additional, dedicated, overview screens that would have to be individually verified.
EC: PenLight's innovative data analysis project aims to build flexibility into the grid for the next 20 years, considering the rise of EVs and DERs. What are some of the key insights you’ve gained from this project so far, and how do you foresee these insights shaping the future of PenLight’s grid?
AG: We continue to monitor the cost and appropriateness of public cloud infrastructure however we continue to find it too costly. The type of expense from a monthly or annually versus capital is also different and a consideration when looking for how to utilize new technologies.
Something we want to ask all of our champions: what does innovation mean to you, especially when it comes to the utility sector? And how do you ensure it finds its way into the DNA of your teams rather than just being a buzzword?
Innovation is the ability to constantly ask: “Where can we improve?” It’s about curiosity and a deep interest in understanding both present-day challenges and future ones to come. Change is inevitable- you can either drive it or you can just be along for the ride. Improvements can be safer, faster, cheaper, and more efficient.
Our culture over the past 10 years at PenLight as we started down this path has shifted to one where we are constantly seeking to adapt, overcome and ask “How can we be better”? A few foundational examples being our ESRI system model, operational network, member-facing OMS, and the deeply integrated “single pane” ADMS.
PenLight has been a member-owned, community-focused company for 99 years - it’s our job as stewards for the short time we are here to make data-driven, future-looking decisions, for the right reasons, so our company can continue to serve for the next 100 years.
Read about the other Innovation Selections here: https://energycentral.com/o/energy-central/announcing-energy-centrals-2024-innovation-champions
Check out the full Innovation Special Issue here: https://energycentral.com/topics/tags/special-issue-2024-06-innovation-power-industry