Episode #102: 'The “Big One” is Coming—Is Your Utility Ready?' with Shamus Gamache, Central Lincoln PUD, and Dr. Leon Kempner, BPA [an Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast]

Learning from how utilities and their equipment have fared in different earthquakes across the globe is the best way to prepare for the future. Assessing the results and the response from power companies all over the world is one of the key jobs of Dr. Leon Kempner, Principal Civil Engineer for Bonneville Power Administration and the industry-leading expert on preparing the power sector for major events like earthquakes. And one of the utilities that has regularly retained the unparalleled insights of Dr. Kempner is Central Lincoln PUD. Specifically, Shamus Gamache, the utility's Director of Engineering, has worked regularly with Dr. Kempner to prepare the Oregon utility to be prepared for the persistent threat of earthquakes and tsunamis off the U.S. West Coast. Both of these experts join podcast host Jason Price and producer Matt Chester to provide their keen perspectives on what it means to prepare for once-in-a-generation events.

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Thanks to the sponsor of this episode of the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast: West Monroe.  

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TRANSCRIPT

Jason Price: 

Welcome to the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast, the show that brings leading minds from the energy industry to discuss the challenges and trends that are transforming and modernizing our energy system. And a quick thank you to West Monroe, our sponsor of today's show. Now, let's talk energy.

I'm Jason Price, Energy Central podcast host and director with West Monroe, coming to you from New York City. With me, as always, from Orlando, Florida, is Energy Central producer and community manager, Matt Chester.

Matt, we're both on the East Coast, so when we think about potential natural disasters, our minds probably go more towards hurricanes, but every region in the country has potential for big ones, major events like tornadoes in the Midwest and South, floods near almost anywhere, deep freezes, and in the west, earthquakes and tsunamis. And it seems like these natural disasters are happening more and more. Can you provide a bit of context on how the threat of these major events impacts utility planning?

Matt Chester: 

Sure, Jason. Preparing for the worst has always been important for any infrastructure, especially as wide and critical as the power grid. But that doesn't mean that the process has gotten any easier.

From ensuring that there are boots on the ground to repair the grid after a disaster, to preparing to be stocked with necessary equipment in the events of failure, to financially planning for all the above, utility management requires careful and constant attention on emergency response and disaster recovery. This is one of those jobs, it truly never ends for utility leaders, making the conversation all the more important and compelling.

Jason Price: 

Yeah, thanks for that, Matt.

We wanted to give some firsthand insights on the world of utility preparations for earthquakes, especially as concerns for the big one is always in the back of minds of those planning for the future. So today, we have two guests on the podcast who can speak from firsthand experience and a position of authority and leading expertise in this area.

They've alluded to us that what's needed isn't grid hardening, but more accurately referred to as looking at it as grid softening. I'm really eager to learn more about what that means, so let's introduce our guests.

First on the call, we have Dr. Leon Kempner, the principal civil engineer for the Department of Energy's Bonneville Power Administration or BPA. Dr. Kempner has over four decades of experience in structural engineering analysis and design as it relates to transmission lines and substations. With that experience, Dr. Kempner has become the forefront expert in the world of preparing utilities and grid operators for major events, notably earthquakes.

Dr. Kempner, thank you so much for joining us today on the call.

Dr. Leon Kempner: 

Thank you too. I'm happy to participate in this activity.

Jason Price: 

Joining Dr. Kempner, we also have a leader at one of the utilities that is implementing the types of solutions that the doctor is researching. Our second guest is Shamus Gamache, director of engineering at Central Lincoln PUD. Shamus has been with the utility for over 15 years, and Central Lincoln PUD serves 41,000 meters and 66,000 people across 700 square miles on the coast of Oregon.

This coast just so happens to be among the closest to a major subduction earthquake zone called the Cascadia, so the persistent threat of earthquakes and resultant tsunamis is always quite close to home for them, making resilience against the once-in-a-generation event a very clear and present focus of their leadership.

Shamus, thanks for joining us as well today to chat about this important topic.

Shamus Gamache: 

Great. Thank you for having both Leon and I as your guests.

Jason Price: 

Dr. Kempner, I want to start with you. Set the stage of this topic. When we had a chance to chat previously, you had mentioned some vast travels you've made across the world to evaluate the situation for utility systems in various places after major earthquakes, from Japan to Chile to California.

Can you tell us a bit about what the process looks like when you go to these sites? Why do you go to these locations after an earthquake? What are you looking for, and what are the results of these trips?

Dr. Leon Kempner: 

Sure. BPA, Bonneville Power Administration, has had a history of evaluating extreme events. In this particular case, we're talking about earthquakes. So whenever we see an extreme event that has a potential similar effect on our grid, we want to learn the best we can. There's no better way of learning about how the grid performs by not going and seeing it, actually, the result of these events.

A good example, after the San Fernando earthquake, we have a facility in California that's the other end of our DC line. We went down and looked at what the damage levels were there. Similar to the California earthquakes, when we can, we will take that opportunity to visit those sites, and see not only what failed but also what worked.

So then when the subduction zone became identified as an active fault within the Northwest, we needed to learn exactly what can be done or what has been done by other utilities that have experienced these.

As we all know, Chile and Japan see these type of earthquakes almost on a regular basis. In the Pacific Northwest, we have the big subduction zone off the coast. The last time that activated was in the 1700s, so we don't have a lot of experience in how to prepare for that event. So the best way to do that is to visit these countries that have gone through that.

Now, it's not an easy trip. Obviously, these are the worst times to visit these countries, during these type of events. Typically, we join a team. The professional societies like IEEE, which is American, the electrical engineers professional activities, and the ASCE professional activities ... We join a reconnaissance team. Those reconnaissance teams set up site visits, because again, this is not the best time to ask Japan or Chile utilities, "Can we come in and look at your sites?" because they're pretty active in trying to get them all back up.

But we do go there with a team of engineers, not necessarily all utility engineers. Most of the time, it's building related or bridge related. We're kind of rare when we get to do this.

We go and visit the utilities. We ask them what worked, what didn't work. They give us site visits where the damage might still be. A lot of times when we get there, most of the damage has been cleaned up. We sit down and talk with them, and just trying to learn what we can do better when this event happens here.

Jason Price: 

Understood. All right. It's obviously not about prevention, because it's not something that we can control, but it's really about pre-event preparation.

What does your work around the US sector look like today? Describe for us how prepared are we, as a nation, for these major events, whether earthquakes or otherwise.

Dr. Leon Kempner: 

Yeah. At BPA, I've been fortunate and lucky to be able to participate in numerous activities for getting our grid more resilient. Other than the fact that we did hazard assessment of our grid not too long ago, to determine what was our extreme event ... We looked at extreme ice, extreme wind and earthquakes. Again, the big subduction zone goes well beyond the normal types of events we see, because in that case, we can have multiple damage levels in substations and transmission.One of the things we do is we participate in standards activities, to make sure that those extreme events, whether they're wind, ice, earthquake, are being addressed in our standards, that this is also done in professional activities.

I particularly participate in NIST Center for Resiliency, because one of the things we have to understand, as well as with the Oregon Resiliency Plan, it's not only about getting the grid up, it's understanding what the region needs after these events, and how fast and how soon they need it. So we participate in a multitude of professional national and regional activities, to both educate and learn how we can become more resilient as a electric power grid.

Jason Price: 

Dr. Kempner, you've mentioned a visual metaphor to us before that I think helps explain this further to those who don't have your expertise, one involving a transformer on a skateboard. Can you talk about that?

Dr. Leon Kempner: 

Sure. One of the things I get the opportunity to do at Bonneville is do applied research relative to coming up with solutions that we can implement in the power grid to become more resilient. The two that we've been working on, and one we completed, and that's the base isolation of transformers.

Base isolation is used in the infrastructure for buildings bridges, but it hasn't really been used in power grid solution, particularly with transformers. What base isolation does is you take your transformer, instead of anchoring it direct to the ground, where in that situation, the ground motions or the forces, if you would, are directly transported into the transformer. You put it on an isolated system. In this case, we're talking friction pendulums.

What those do is they disconnect the transformer from the ground. What it also does is it makes the transformer what's called a lower natural frequency, so it actually doesn't move, but the ground moves underneath it, and the transformer sits on top of that ground.

The other thing that we're doing is research in what has been proven to work well in earthquakes is how you interconnect your substation equipment with flexible bus. Adding flexibility between two pieces of equipment, or pieces of equipment in a structure, helps it perform in an earthquake, because the two pieces of equipment have different earthquake responses, and they tend to fight each other and hurt each other. So relatively speaking, adding flex, and understanding the loads that those flexible jumpers or cables input onto the equipment, is very important for survivability.

Jason Price: 

I like that. So it's almost not a grid hardening. It's not necessarily grid softening. Maybe it's grid reflexing.

Dr. Leon Kempner: 

One of my colleagues, engineer says ..." Well, I'm not sure if I agree with him, but one of my colleagues says, "It's not always the loads that cause failure. It's the displacements that cause failure." If you can allow the displacements, you're probably better off than trying to make each piece of equipment resist each other's load. So yes.

Jason Price: 

All right, very good. Thank you, Doctor, for the global view you provided.

Now, let's bring it to local geographic areas. Shamus, I want to bring you to the local level, and discuss your work around Central Lincoln PUD. Obviously, the ability to prepare for major events and unexpected disasters, important for any utility with a recognized vulnerability, such as your case being near a major subduction earthquake zone.

Talk to us about the role you play in trying to prepare your utility for these major events, and how the work of Dr. Kempner factors in. And can you address that interesting turn of phrase that I mentioned in the intro, "How is the solution more like a grid softening than grid hardening?"

Shamus Gamache: 

Yeah. First, I'll familiarize the audience with Central Lincoln service territory on the Oregon coast. We are a central Oregon coast power utility provider, following along the Highway 101, north to south, for about 120 miles. Geographically, that's about a third of the total length of Oregon's coast. And we go about 30 miles inland. We're bordered on the Oregon Coast Range to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. We own and operate 28 substations, and have both 69 KV and 115 KV transmission power lines, and also 12,005 KV distribution power lines.

My role as the director of engineering encompasses the substations, the transmission, the distribution, telecommunication system infrastructure. It's to design and maintain those systems, not only to be reliable when faced with our reoccurring Oregon coast winters that come to us each year, but also to be resilient to withstand those 300 to 400 year earthquakes, such as Cascadia that Leon talked about.

That's where Dr. Kempner's research has been key in coming up with ways to prepare our utility infrastructure. We know that we're overdue for such an event. With the reoccurring winter storms that pound the Oregon coast each year, we've referred to it as hardening the system in our terminology, so that the substations and transmission lines would not break and fall apart when those winds reached 100+ miles per hour on the Oregon coast.

Now, grid softening is the term we like to use within our substations when designing for a major earthquake that describes how we don't want those transformers, insulators, bushings or other critical equipment to break. A much softer dampening effect underneath the transformers, and things like the flexible bus or conductors connected on the top of the transformers, we want to be able to soften the electrical grid allowing for lateral movement. Basically, the transformer's isolated from the ground, and the fixed connected parts and will be able to ride through an event undamaged.

Ultimately, the end goal in mind is to get the lights back on as quickly as possible once we've assessed the system and the system engineering staff and operations is ready to reenergize.

Jason Price: 

That's great. Thank you, Shamus.

As an important topic, no doubt, some of the inertia, unfortunately, comes down to dollars and cents. Share with our listeners, Shamus, what sort of investment's required for the updates you're making?

Shamus Gamache: 

Yes. Central Lincoln continued to set aside capital dollars each year, specifically allocated for grid resiliency in preparation for this large earthquake. We budget little by little for this.

For example, when we're replacing an $800,000 substation transformer, we now budget for the proper triple pendulum base isolation systems that Bonneville, and specifically Leon, recommends to go underneath the transformers. Prior to Leon's research and data sharing, we were not doing that. So now we're softening the grid by adding those base isolation systems.

That base system cost is minimal when we're looking at replacing a large power transformer that could have a one, two, three, or maybe even more year lead time once an order's placed.

Other low hanging fruit types of investments are replacing the fixed hard bus, or aluminum carrying conductors, with flexible bus. We use IEEE 1527-2006 as a guideline for the best practice. There's also, IEEE 693 to reference for seismic design of substations.

Jason Price: 

All right. That's great.

I want to ask both of you, it's really around the knowledge sharing and the preparation that's going on. You mentioned IEEE. That's an organization where there's knowledge sharing going on. But in your opinions, for both of you, what more can be done to help utility leaders address this issue?

We have had people on the podcast talk about resiliency and adaptation based on climate change and so on, but are we taking it seriously? Are leaders talking about it enough? Are the regulators supporting these kinds of investments, or should they be doing more? We'd love to hear your impressions, from both of you, on this topic.

Doctor, we'll start with you.

Dr. Leon Kempner: 

It's a very good question. As Shamus said, from the Cascadia perspective, and maybe even from any of the natural disasters or the disasters that we face, particularly with the subduction zone though, we built our grid with very minimal earthquake in the Pacific Northwest, because we tended to be considered minimal earthquake. We see a lot in the Seattle, Puget Sound area, but overall in Oregon, I think it was not till about the 1980s before we actually had seismic criteria in our codes.

So we have a very, very old system that wasn't designed for this event, and just too difficult to go out and just say, "Well, we're going to replace everything." So we have to do it on a long term basis. That's how most utilities ... Even the Oregon Resiliency Plan was over decades to get to the point where we're ready. Hopefully, that it doesn't happen before then.

We are a small community, the electric power industry community, and we do talk a lot about this, particularly on the West Coast, about earthquakes and what can be done. We are a little unique in that we have the subduction zone, whereas California, at least most of California, doesn't have that type of events.

There are some differences in terms of the response. A crustal earthquake's going to take out a few substations. Subduction zone, in our case, could take out 157 substations that have some kind of damage at every one of them. So you need to do something. It's just going to take a long time.

But at the same time, when we try to do this type of resiliency work, we also have to maintain the reliability of the system. That costs money. We have to be cost effective, just to keep our rates reasonable for our customers. It's a really balancing act, constantly a balancing act, on obtaining funding to do the resiliency level work versus the reliability work.

But BPA and Central Lincoln, and most of the utilities in the Northwest, I feel are doing a decent job. Just relative to the base isolation, there are actually five utilities in the Pacific Northwest now that have base isolated transformers.

The nice thing about the base isolation of a transformer, it protects the whole transformer, because the transformer is one of our most vulnerable pieces of equipment. It's a piece of equipment we can't operate without. With the supply chain, and the things in the world right now, it could take up to three years to replace a transformer, particularly the real high voltage ones, the 500 to 230s and so forth.

So we just have to continue to chip at it. Hopefully, we have enough time to get where we need to be before that event happens.

Jason Price: 

Sure. Shamus, what are your thoughts?

Shamus Gamache: 

Yeah, good question. I started my career here at Central Lincoln in mid-2000s. Earthquakes really were not even talked about or budgeted for at our utility. We knew they'd happened. I think the one that was more significant was probably in the '60s or '70s.

But when the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and subsequent tsunami hit the coast of Japan, we saw some of the effects of that here in North America, and specifically on our coastline. Nothing like what they saw in Japan, but we did see some debris and such that came up on our side of the world.

So since then, we've been budgeting for resiliency, specifically earthquakes and tsunamis, and designing and getting prepared for such an event. I've led tours here to other local small and midsize utilities, from both Oregon and Washington, of our most modern earthquake-ready substations here right along the Oregon coast.

I encourage more utility leaders to reach out to me and Leon, and ask questions about how they can make their system more resilient in preparation for an earthquake. Any time, I'd be happy to visit your utility and make an assessment, what you could do to make your substation and other critical infrastructure more resilient, earthquake ready, just building on what we've learned from Bonneville and what we're implementing here at Central Lincoln.

Jason Price: 

That's great, Shamus. That's really helpful. I'm sure that our listeners will appreciate that as they think more about these types of issues, and knowing that there's resources to reach out to, including yourself and the doctor. So thank you for that.

Back over to you, Doctor. You travel the world, so you have a more global perspective on how this is being addressed. Can you do a little bit of a compare and contrast, what you're seeing in Asia and in South America, how they're preparing, and how does that compare to how the US approaches it?

Dr. Leon Kempner: 

Yeah. It's a really good question, because when we first started looking at the subduction zone, and through our grid hazard assessments, looking at the damage levels, you just start to wonder whether you can survive this type of event.

But if you do look towards Japan, and you look towards Chile, they do survive this event. But again, they've been preparing for it by experiencing those. When you experience something, hopefully, you learn from it and you implement what you learned. Obviously, though, you don't always catch it all. So the next event, you learn some more.

One of the things we learned by going to Japan and Chile is you can survive these events. They're survivable, but you need to get prepared, you need to design for it.

Particularly in Chile, when we went to Chile after their big subduction zone, one of the things, and this goes back to this grid softening issue, we went into some of their larger substations, like 500 KV substations. They still have what's called live tank circuit breakers down there at 500 KV. These are the most vulnerable pieces of equipment, other than the transformer, to an earthquake, because you've got thousands of pounds of porcelain, and components on a porcelain column. They were base isolated, and they didn't have any failures.

Looking through their substations, a lot of their equipment, I won't say most, but a lot of their equipment has some kind of damping or base isolating devices, which again, is this softening issue.

So you can prepare for this. You can be ready. Unfortunately, with our grid, since our region, we haven't seen these in our ... other than 1700, we have a lot of vulnerabilities out there. We just need to work at it, getting them replaced. Hope I answered that question.

Jason Price: 

Yeah, you did. Absolutely. Thank you.

Shamus reminds me of a podcast we had with an executive from Duke Energy who's also a fireman. He worked closely with the local fire departments on the safety around batteries, should batteries ever catch on fire, God forbid.

I imagine that a lot of your work also has to include local police, and fire departments, and other sorts of security and safety management, given the overall nature. So it's not just the plumbing, if you will, of what goes into these systems, but then how do you contain it, and bring whatever potential outcome of the disaster might lead to, so that you can get back up and running as soon as possible. Am I correct on that?

Shamus Gamache: 

Yeah, absolutely. That is key. Utilities usually do a pretty good job, but if they're not, they need to be communicating with their local fire departments.

What we like to do is ... Central Lincoln serves 12 cities, and then we have parts of four different counties in Oregon, so multiple different fire departments and fire districts. We give them tours of our substations, helping them familiarize with what equipment is in there, what type of fire suppression we have in our control buildings, and what to do if there is an event where they need to come out to. We keep up the communications. I recommend that, if you're not already, with your local fire districts.

Jason Price: 

Yeah. I'm going to go back over to the doctor. Certainly, Shamus, you can jump in and answer as well. Both of you possess unique knowledge and insight. It's in an industry that this is really strongly needed, and even more so than ever before, but it's also unique knowledge that you don't necessarily get from the classroom, but over time and on the field, and over the years of studying this and examining it. Both of you have been students in this for quite some time, and have done a great job.

Maybe this is a question more for the doctor, but given the pioneering work that you're doing, how are you hoping the next generation of utility professionals will embody this, take in this insight and run with it in the future? What are your impressions? Again, both of you can answer this.

Dr. Leon Kempner: 

I can start. I think I said this earlier, that we are a small community, and we do talk to each other quite a bit, through our professional activities and just meeting.

The other thing I want to point out is we're very concerned about our customers, obviously, but we also interact with other infrastructure, because the other infrastructures, like highway, water, natural gas and so forth, need to know what the electric utilities are doing.

So in Oregon, we have a program called CLIPP, Cascadia Lifeline Infrastructure Protection Program. It's out of Oregon State. It's a consortium of critical lifeline providers that get together. We put some money into a budget, then we do research that's common to all of those. Most times, it's common to all of our infrastructure components. By my guess, even with our professional activities, like was mentioned, 693, 1527, and there's a whole bunch of others too, EPRI, CEATI, which is out of Canada, and all our standards activities, we talk to each other.

So just like base isolation, BPA spent ... What? We spent four years developing that technology, verifying that technology, which is the triple friction pendulum. Is this the appropriate technology deployed to our most critical component? We shared that information.

Like I said earlier, we've got now five utilities in the Pacific Northwest. California utilities are looking into it. They're a little more hesitant for some reason. I'm not quite sure why. But we do talk to each other.

Even within Bonneville, I keep being asked, because it was mentioned that I have decades, and I'm ready to retire, obviously, what's going to happen when I go. But we have good young engineers in BPA that can step in my place. I think that's also true of the industry. A lot of these committees we participate on ... I'll be honest with you, I became the old guy. There's a lot of good talent, young talent on these groups that will move us forward in this area.

Shamus Gamache: 

Yeah, exactly. I'll add to that list. NWPPA, Northwest Public Power, they have conferences throughout the Northwest often. I've been seeing a lot of momentum, both with them, IEEE, Western Energy Institute out of Portland, Oregon. They're up and down the West Coast for both the gas and electric sector. There's been more and more presentations and talk around resiliency, specifically Cascadia for Oregon, Washington and parts of British Columbia.

I'm a licensed engineer in State of Oregon. So at the conferences at the engineering group, which makes up all the engineering disciplines, civil, electrical, mechanical, nuclear, and also surveyors, there's been more and more talk at our meetings about how the Northwest is preparing for a large event like Cascadia.

Last week, I spoke at Portland State University to a civil engineering class that specifically focused around resiliency and lifeline planning throughout the state. So at the university level, there's been more professors or experts speaking up on resiliency here in Oregon at different universities.

Jason Price: 

Well, I'm glad I asked that question. I feel a lot more reassured now. You definitely talked me off the cliff. That's good to hear there's a next generation of leaders to carry this forward, your important work.

All right. We have now come to the point of the show where we actually want to learn more about you, the person, rather than the professional. So we have something called the lightning round, where we ask you a set of questions, and you're to keep the response to either one word or phrase. Gentlemen, are you ready?

Dr. Leon Kempner: 

Yeah. This is the hardest part about this podcast, so let's go for it.

Jason Price: 

Okay. Earthquakes are scary, but what is your favorite thing about the West Coast? Doctor, let's start with you.

Dr. Leon Kempner: 

Being able to go to the beautiful Oregon coast, and into the high desert of Oregon in the eastern side. I'm from New York, so I really appreciate what we have here in Oregon.

Jason Price: 

Shamus?

Shamus Gamache: 

Yeah. Believe it or not, for this topic, but getting outdoors.

Jason Price: 

Like it.

All right. Shamus, will stay with you. Movie, TV show or book you could revisit countless times without ever getting tired of it.

Shamus Gamache: 

That's easy. Movies, Guardians of the Galaxy series.

Jason Price: 

Doctor?

Dr. Leon Kempner: 

I would second that, Guardians of Galaxies. Yes.

Jason Price: 

Third question. Stay with you, Doctor. When do you get the most productive work done?

Dr. Leon Kempner: 

Probably late evenings, when everybody's in bed and no phone calls.

Jason Price: 

Shamus?

Shamus Gamache: 

Mornings after a good cup of freshly ground coffee.

Jason Price: 

We'll stay with you, Shamus. If you didn't end up in the world of engineering and energy, like you both did, what do you think would have been an alternative career path?

Shamus Gamache: 

Not engineering? My next ones up would be oceanographer or maybe a merchant marine.

Jason Price: 

Doctor?

Dr. Leon Kempner: 

Mine would be try to be a medical doctor, where I would have more direct contact with the people I'm helping.

Jason Price: 

Okay. Then lastly, we'll stay with you, Doctor. What are you most motivated by?

Dr. Leon Kempner: 

Given the opportunity to address challenging problems and the resources to do it.

Jason Price: 

Shamus?

Shamus Gamache: 

Striving to always do my best.

Jason Price: 

You guys have done a great job. As a tradition, on this show, we always give our guests the last say in your words. You're speaking to our audience of your peers. Shamus, we'll stay with you. What are your final words or takeaways that you'd like to share with your colleagues?

Shamus Gamache: 

Well, we're all great at making our systems reliable, as utility engineers. I want you folks to challenge yourself, moving forward, to make them more resilient and adaptable to all different kinds of weather events.

Jason Price: 

Doctor?

Dr. Leon Kempner: 

Yeah. As lifeline providers, as a critical lifeline provider, we strive to do the best we can. A lot of times, people we're trying to help don't understand that, but unfortunately, someday, we may have that event. Hopefully, everything we did will make their lives better during that event.

Jason Price: 

Absolutely. I know that our audience is going to be much appreciated with the words of wisdom that you both shared today.

For anyone who's not from your region, they don't understand necessarily the complexity of the challenges that you both are preparing to, potentially and hopefully never, have to face. But I think it's definitely a wake up call for everyone to look in their own locality, and make sure that they are prepared as well as both of you are in the Bonneville region.

Excellent job. Excellent conversation. Thank you for the insight. Thank you so much for joining on today's show.

You can always reach Shamus and Dr. Kempner through the Energy Central platform, where they welcome your questions and comments.

We also want to give a shot out of thanks to the podcast sponsor that made today's episode possible. Thanks to West Monroe. West Monroe works with the nation's largest electric, gas and water utilities in their telecommunication, grid modernization, and digital and workforce transformations. West Monroe brings a multidisciplinary team that blends utility, operations and technology expertise to address modernizing aging infrastructure, advisory on transportation electrification, ADMS deployments, data and analytics, and cybersecurity.

Once again, I'm your host, Jason Price. Stay plugged in and fully charged in the discussion by hopping into the community at energycentral.com. We'll see you next time at the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast.

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All new episodes of the Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast will be posted to the relevant Energy Central community group, but you can also subscribe to the podcast at all the major podcast outlets, including:

• Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/energy-central-unnamed-podcast-series/id1488804391

• Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5jiUn8vzSq1t99WtECLn1j

• Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fV_zeSLbcDA&list=PLOFTK18LIdud8gULyJPpWh-GXO45OXviN&ab_channel=EnergyCentralTV

• Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast on Amazon Podcasts: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/e573c7f0-cbe6-49af-9b46-16fbcb8dbaa7/energy-central-power-perspectives%E2%84%A2-podcast?-podcast

• Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast on Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/energy-central-tobenamed

• Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast on TuneIn: https://tunein.com/podcasts/Business--Economics-Podcasts/Energy-Central-Podcast-p1274390/

• Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/energycentral