Episode #130: 'Grid Reliability in the Hot Seat with FERC's Summer Energy Report' with Brad Johnson, Senior Product Portfolio Manager, Energy at Bentley Systems [an Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast]

To help the Energy Central Community best understand how the report goes beyond mere power supply concerns and examines other factors that can compromise grid reliability, this episode features Brad Johnson, the Senior Product Portfolio Manager for Energy at Bentley Systems. With his diverse and proven background in the industry and his current role at Bentley Systems, Brad offers a comprehensive 360-degree view of the challenges facing the grid. In this episode of the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast, Brad shares with host Jason Price and producer Matt Chester the critical insights from FERC's report and his perspective to help us all gain a deeper understanding of the pressing issues impacting grid reliability in today's ever-evolving energy landscape.

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Thanks to the sponsor of this episode of the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast: Bentley Systems

Key Links:

Brad Johnson's Energy Central Profile: https://energycentral.com/member/profile/brad-johnson-7

Bentley on Energy Central: https://energycentral.com/o/bentley

A Call for Resiliency: Today’s Utility Environment and the Call for Strong Leadership: https://energycentral.com/o/bentley/call-resiliency-today%E2%80%99s-utility-environment-and-call-strong-leadership

Did you know? The Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast has been identified as one of the industry's 'Top 25 Energy Podcasts': blog.feedspot.com/energy_podcasts/

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 Bentley Systems, our sponsor of today's show. Now let's talk energy.

I am Jason Price, Energy Central Podcast host and director with West Monroe, coming to you from New York City and with me as always, from Orlando, Florida, is energy essential producer and community manager, Matt Chestre.

Matt, the context for today's discussion is based on FERC's recently published and timely report, The 2023 Summer Energy Market and Electric Reliability Assessment. From a capacity standpoint, we should be in good shape to meet summer demand, but we are right on that razor's edge of not having sufficient base load generation supply in much of the country.

However, reliability is not just about power supply and the report digs into several other areas that can compromise grid reliability. As the FERC report identifies, we have new and continued reliability concerns, and these include supply chain disruptions, factors affecting solar development, EPA actions and regulation, increase in physical tax on the grid and Diablo Canyon Power Plant license extension.

Matt, you monitor the energy central community. So what are you seeing in terms of reliability and I have to believe there are other items that belong in this list. What can you share?

Matt Chester: 

Yeah, Jason, you're absolutely right. From the perspective of the energy consumer power sector, it's only valued as it can be counted upon to be ready to go when the light switch is flipped. And so that reliability is probably the number one priority above all others. And so in recent months, we've of course seen heavy attention from energy central community members on those rising threats to reliability, the spate of physical attacks to the grid late last year. The regular threats that extreme heat this summer are posing to whether the grid can stay up and humming and the growing specter, shadow, whatever you want to call it, of electrification and how this rising expected demand is going to impact the status quo of reliability. These are all the stories that have garnered the most focus from our community and no doubt these are the conversations that our guest today is having every day with his peers, collaborators, and customers.

Jason Price: 

Yeah, absolutely. And I'll note at the point of time of recording this episode, we've already broken through all the heat records recorded to date for the summer, so this is definitely a report that's taken a lot of notice and a lot of discussion on at Energy Central.

It definitely sounds like a hot topic that makes our guests timely as ever. We're fortunate to be able to dive into all these relevant utility happenings along with Brad Johnson, the senior product portfolio manager for Energy at Bentley Systems.

I'm going to ask Brad to credentialize himself and we'll see from Brad's diverse and proven background and his current role at Bentley Systems that he has a 360 degree view of the challenges to the grid. And then we have the right person on the show for this topic. So we're grateful to have him along. Welcome Brad Johnson, thank you for joining us on Power Perspectives Podcast.

Brad Johnson:

Yeah, Jason, I appreciate the invitation today and Matt, good to be speaking with you as well. This is a pretty important topic and from my past experience, whether it's working with some early FERC regulations around vegetation, engineering hard clearance in the transmission system, efficient design of distribution systems in both gas and electric or simply working with those trying to execute work in the field efficiently and safely, it's all coming together decades of evolution of this industry, decades of change in how energy is produced and consumed at a rate not seen before, I think since the dawn of the electrification age. It's exciting, it's challenging and I think the community, as Matt pointed out, is talking about it and all looking for the best ways to be ready and answer the call.

Jason Price: 

Yeah, absolutely. So given that context, Brad, can you start by giving us a fuller introduction of your work? How exactly do you and your team engage with the utilities and what expertise do you personally bring to those efforts?

Brad Johnson:

We work with our user community in several different forums. My role or my remit at Bentley is to look after energy between the point where it's produced and the meter where it's to deliver. So that's your transmission, distribution, substations and all manner of other equipment and infrastructure in between. We interface with these users through user advisory boards, through community organizations, through forums like Energy Central and other places and participating in events.

And my role in our product advancement group is specifically to make sure that we align our priorities and what we bring to bear for our users, aligns with the needs that they have today that they're articulating regularly today, but also look out over the horizon so that we're working ahead of their needs. And conversations like this are crucial to our mission within our group, within my team, and from my perspective, we're looking at the nexus of not only what people traditionally think of in terms of technologies used to design, build and manage the grid and all of its components, but it's how does it interact with the rest of the physical and logical world of transportation and infrastructure?

So we bring this all together. Bentley's uniquely positioned in that we touch a very, very wide and broad swath of infrastructure types and I have colleagues that handle those, look after those different infrastructure types and we work together regularly behind the scenes to make sure that we're all coming together to solve these really big global challenges.

Jason Price: 

And it certainly is a timely discussion. I mean, basically on the lead up to my intro, I mentioned that the summer heat has already surpassed all records and the FERC report speaks a lot to this. So what would you advise the utility decision makers listening to plan for this coming summer?

Brad Johnson:

We're definitely in it, like you said, and so far many of these regions that broke out their forecasting and have been performing pretty well because while we have had some high highs, I know here in June in the Midwest we were very warm for a while due to an Omega block in the jet stream, it's cooled off a bit. And demand response programs have done a good job of helping shave those peak demands and allowing our existing generation to keep up as well as the infrastructure between generation metering.

But in terms of decision makers, I think it's important to recognize the constraints that have been put in place, both regulatory and capital planning around the base load generation and the rapidly changing regulatory environment and how energy is consumed, where it's consumed and how much of it's consumed going forward in the form of electricity.

So looking beyond that next two, three, and five-year capital plan and understanding that the changes to the demands on the design and operation of the grid to enable even the most basic quality of life that we enjoy, is happening at a faster pace than ever. It's going to require potentially more capital than ever. And I think we may talk about this later, the customer or user or citizen sediment and patience for learning along the way is very low. So the idea of getting it right the first time is absolutely crucial in order to maintain trust in these leaders' organization as we go through this transition.

Jason Price: 

Well, that's really helpful, but let's put this in the context of grid mod and particularly the work you do at Bentley. We have a rapidly changing regulatory landscape under which utilities operate. There's an expectation by the public that utilities have to do more than ever faster than ever, including in some new areas. So how can utilities be expected to keep pace?

Brad Johnson:

It's really a combination of a few things. Number one, making sure that they continue to populate their teams with the right team members, with the right skills, not maybe necessarily the exact knowledge, but the aptitude to gain the knowledge because having the technology tools and other components in place to address this need, it's only useful if you have the people there.

So I think really looking at the people is absolutely critical, but I also think looking at solving problems in new and agile ways is going to be critical. And what that means is addressing new methods of technology delivery that are flexible, that are scalable, that are elastic in nature, going away from the idea that you buy a stack of pizza box servers and stick them in a data center and trust that you can capitalize them over six years before they need upgrading or replacement or an ERP system that's in place for 30 years without any major changes.

It's not really going to support things. So it's really going to take an agile look at operating the business of a utility in order to keep pace, the labor side, the colleague side, technology side, et cetera. I would also say that it's important that leaders at utilities and energy companies in general take a stronger partnership with the regulator in terms of problem solving, understanding what barriers are there to adopting new technologies and working collaboratively to make sure that it can be done safely, securely, but also efficiently and rapidly. Those are a few things that come to mind.

Jason Price: 

I'd love your perspective on the following, and that is that the utilities are weighing into areas that weren't really part of their original job description and that primarily is around transportation being the most relevant example today. What is that doing to transform the perspective of utilities and their leaders from your perspective?

Brad Johnson:

Yeah, it's meaning that utilities look beyond the operation of electric transmission as a distribution, as a way to, as I think was said earlier, take for granted that when you switch lights on, the lights come on. We're looking at power delivery having to happen at places at scales that hadn't really been considered outside heavy manufacturing planning.

I think of the aluminum plants, smelting facilities, other large industrial facilities with huge electric loads, those are pretty easy to plan for because they have a long build cycle, lots of permitting and there's usually a lot of heads up. But now when we look at, for example, transportation, it doesn't take that long to cite building in a truck stop or a service station. And with all the service stations and truck stops that are out there likely looking to continue to draw customers there, we'll likely see even more proliferation of bulk charging, high power charging stations for electric vehicles, but emerging, we also see the need for point of consumption, point of fueling hydrogen generation.

And I think this alignment between transportation and energy consumption is really one of those things that maybe hadn't been considered as strongly in not just the long-term planning of a utility, but it's changing rapidly. If you had said two years ago that your Flying J's and your Love's truck stops might have point of fuel hydrogen plants at them, somebody probably would've looked at you a little funny. But that's what these leaders need to start considering is where are these large loads going to start exist in the system?

How does that impact not just distribution but upstream and the transmission? And then making sure that the base-load generation will support it. There's just a lot of these cross-industry or cross-infrastructure type things that are out there. So looking out beyond the typical place to get knowledge on these topics is going to be really critical.

Jason Price: 

Yeah, understood. We all speak to the utilities and boy, one of the major challenges that always comes up is just building and maintaining a workforce that's strong enough to overcome many of the challenges that you're outlining here. Do us a favor, put on your Bentley systems hat on for a second, and what are you seeing in this area and what advice would you share with utilities on how best to prepare now for that future?

Brad Johnson:

Yeah, this is something I've been having frequent conversations with large utilities globally actually is how do we attract but then also retain that new generation of energy professionals into our industry? And we produce technology, but that technology still requires smart, intelligent people on the other end to leverage it to solve these problems.

So what are we seeing? Well, we see a couple of things. One, we see that the supply of educated and ready to learn more people in our industry continues to lag demand. So partnerships with universities, partnerships with two year colleges, with vocational training schools, with apprenticeships, all levels really need to continue to be invested in. And we do that at Bentley with enablements across our infrastructure types, through our partnerships with universities and access to software and training for students. Once you've got those employees, I mean the whole idea of attracting employees is its own HR discussion, probably suitable for a podcast episode of its own, but the other thing that we've been talking about is employee retention.

Most of these new members of our workforce, their perception of how a business should operate and what technology is available is driven by their business to consumer relationships. So think of, I could push a button and I can have just about anything delivered to my house within a day or two, that I could push a button and I can see on a map where my dinner is on its way to my house.

Technology does a lot. Well, that expectation as to what they get at home in their personal life is transitioning into the work environment. And so we see this in how we adapt our user interfaces and user experience in our software. Utilities need to also understand that in order to retain these new employees, the technology can't look like it's from 1980. It can't look like it's from 1990, and early 2000s is starting to get a bit stale.

And so attracting and then retaining these employees, we have to meet them where their technology expectations are, what they expect the tools, but then also from a process perspective, that's how we do things here. You can use that as a, I don't want to call it an excuse, but as a modus operandi, but it's not going to do well to retain this new generation that maybe has very useful ideas and new ways of doing things efficiently, better, leveraging technology.

So that open mind to changing things up is going to be critical or you'll just find you don't have anybody left on the team to get the work done.

Jason Price: 

Yeah, and Brad, in your role at Bentley as senior product portfolio manager, you have a macro view of what's going on. So share with the audience in terms of all the new digital technology, whether it's just coming onto the market and already available in the industry, how is this changing the approach and do you see energy providers taking the right approach and utilizing these technologies as they should today?

Brad Johnson:

As has kind of always been the case, it's a spectrum. You have the leaders and then you have the followers, and it's not necessarily negative to say that someone's either leading or following. It's typically how it breaks down. You have those who jump ahead, who are equipped to adopt new technologies, who will fail forward fast, but they do it in a smart and in a safe way. Failure in an electrical system can be very bad or it can be very productive depending on the scope and how well controlled it is.

And following fast has advantages too. You're not paying the cost of learning things ahead of other people. I think that's a part of it. Yeah, I think one interesting aspect of what the utilities, and this spans electric cooperatives, municipal utilities, other government agencies, and then investment utilities is the adoption of elastic infrastructure.

Now, typically people think cloud and the cloud is not the place to store your pictures automatically on your phone. The cloud, when we talk about it, an infrastructure is a protected elastic environment where the technology scales with demand. This is something that utilities have a maturity model that they're following along.

Some are very early in cloud adoption, do it in a very methodical way that limits risk, but also allows them to meet the needs and demands of technology today. Others are very much still a brick and mortar, everything's in a data center, walled off guard. Now, much like anything, there's risk associated with both. There's not too distant past stories of ransomware getting into these walled off environments causing crippling outages of infrastructure.

And we almost hear about those more often than we hear about cloud-based infrastructure. And I think we're in this top part of a curve of adoption for cloud infrastructure or elastic infrastructure where people are starting to realize that it's not high risk versus low risk. It's a mix of risk and it takes a methodical and well thought or well contemplated adoption of those technologies. That I think is probably going to be... That's one that's separating those who are getting ahead of these challenges and applying cost-effective approaches to solving problems versus those who are still trying to figure it out. Maybe perhaps that's one example of where people are.

Jason Price: 

Yeah. I want to ask you about Bentley Systems. It's a fascinating company. It's not just in the energy space, but it's in all sorts of infrastructure. So your company kind of represents or has a good feel for the landscape in terms of where we are as a country and where we are in the globe in terms of infrastructure build out and development, how far some countries are versus others in terms of the maturity of it. Can you tell us about that? Can you speak to how you collaborate? Do you have integrations of the energy practice with areas that you also are conversant in, like housing, telecommunications or other infrastructure? Do you have a hand in that and can you talk a little bit about that?

Brad Johnson:

Yeah, I have colleagues that have similar roles covering other forms of infrastructure, whether it's airports, cities, water, other parts of the energy infrastructure, space, rail, et cetera. And we meet on a regular basis and share not only ideas of how we do our work, the execution of our work, but trends that we notice within our domains.

So we see a lot of sharing across our organization and that I think is one benefit to those colleagues, all of us being under one roof. It's very easy for us to collaborate when we're all Bentley colleagues. I think that's actually been pretty exciting and has been wonderful. As far as maybe more directly at energy, we see these issues you outlined emerging in the conversations we have with infrastructure owners. I was in a meeting with a very large municipal electric and water utility recently, and there are changes happening in zoning within their territory.

They serve hundreds of thousands of customers and with a migration from single family focus to multifamily focus, they're seeing multiple issues all coming together at the same time. They see that now at an address, they predicted a certain amount of load off of a 200 amp service now at that same address, they're going to see up to 4, 5, 6, 200 amp service points on that primary serving that area.

In addition to that, they see the demand increasing at each of those service points. So previously it was lights and TVs and air conditionings. Now we have plug-in electric vehicles, we have the prohibition of natural gas in certain areas, so now we see cooking and heating and water heating moving to electric from natural gas. And so it's a compounding component.

Well, in our digital twin model, we call it iTwin, we are looking at new ways to layer in those what probably weren't necessarily considered perspectives as real time into the electrical planning design and as operated models and putting it all together in a single view so that somebody who's trying to figure out how do we address this, can see all this information coming together.

See, the same thing with telecommunications. The demand on overhead infrastructure continues to increase as more and more broadband services are either implemented or upgraded over time. So the need for a pole to hold as much low as it does becomes more and more important. Meteorological data, obviously we talk about transmission, Bentley has acquired a couple companies in recent years, Spida Software, PLS, Power Line Systems, as examples, show that we're trying to bring the structural component, in with the logical component, in with reality capture and what's actually out in the field. So all of this is really coming together, influenced by many different aspects. And frankly, it's probably one of the most exciting times to be in this industry because there's just so much impacting it more than there was, say even 10 years ago.

Jason Price: 

Yeah, well, just add some color to the conversation. I've been reading some reports about the massive migration to states like Arizona, you pack up and you move and get a new job in Arizona, but you don't necessarily think about the infrastructure to support that when you and a hundred thousand other families are doing the same thing. And what that means to a local town or municipality for their water, their sewer system, their road system, their telecommunication system, their power, the grid, so on and so on and so on. So you're Bentley Systems seems to be right in the middle of it all. So it's fascinating. I guess it's a good time to be a Bentley portfolio manager.

Brad Johnson:

It's certainly interesting on a daily basis, and I have a passion for energy and a passion for the role that we play in maintaining quality of life for the customers of the users that we serve. And I think we're solving big challenges right now. I think they're important challenges and as I think with anybody listening or with you, Matt or Jason, we're dealing with big topics, big issues, and yeah, it is actually pretty fun. I'm going to tell you.

Jason Price: 

Yeah. Well, this is great. I mean, you shared some interesting nuggets about the industry, so we really appreciate your insight. And so Brad, we want to pivot now to an opportunity we call the lightning round, which is where we get to learn more about you, the person rather than you, the professional. We just throw a bunch of questions at you and we ask for one word or phrase. Are you ready?

Brad Johnson:

I think so. This might be the hardest questions we discuss.

Jason Price: 

Fantastic. All right. What would you pick as your superpower?

Brad Johnson:

Well, flying, without a doubt.

Jason Price: 

Ideal vacation spot?

Brad Johnson:

West Slope of the Rockies.

Jason Price: 

If you could invite anyone from history to have dinner with you, who would it be?

Brad Johnson:

This is probably one of the hardest because there's a lot of people I'd love to talk history with, but I think Abraham Lincoln would be one of the most interesting right now.

Jason Price: 

Who has been your biggest role model?

Brad Johnson:

We just got past Father's Day and I was reflecting on that. I think my father would be my biggest role model.

Jason Price: 

What are you most passionate about?

Brad Johnson:

Outdoors. I know that sounds a little funny and a bit broad, but I would say right now one of the things I'm most passionate about is the outdoors and access to the outdoors for everybody.

Jason Price: 

Yeah, I think everyone would agree to that, for sure. Well, that's great and nice job navigating through the lightning round. As a thanks for that, we want to give you the final word. So what's the final and lasting message you hope our listeners take away from today's conversation?

Brad Johnson:

I think if I was to offer anything to think about after today, it's that we're facing a rapidly changing production and consumption landscape and energy that is impacted in ways from outside forms of infrastructure like never before. And I think it's important for all of us, a sense of duty to figure out how we answer this call to maintain or improve the quality of life that an affordable level, for everybody, global. And we're going to need to have open communication across every component, player, participant in the energy sector in order for us to get this right.

That means with each other as infrastructure owners and operators with our users and customers, but also very open and honest communication between us, technology providers, and solution enablers and the infrastructure owners themselves. If we actually all have really open, honest, and collaborative dialogue, I think we can get this right. I think we're going to see some really exciting things happen in the next five to 10 years, and I believe that we have a lot of the right people in place to make it happen.

So my last word is go into this with an open mind, an optimistic mindset. We'll roll up our sleeves and we'll get this figured out working together.

Jason Price: 

Thank you, Brad. Thanks for spending time with us and sharing your insights with our listeners. I know once we put this live on EnergyCentral.com, we'll have questions from community members, so hopefully you can hop back into the community to respond to those as soon as they come in. But until then, I just want to thank you one last time for your visit to Energy Central's Power Perspectives Podcast.

Brad Johnson: 

Thanks for having me, Jason. Really appreciate the opportunity.

Jason Price: 

Fantastic, and a big thanks to today's sponsor, Bentley Systems. Bentley Systems is the infrastructure engineering software company providing innovative software to advance the world's infrastructure sustaining both the global economy and environment. Their industry leading software solutions are used by professionals and organizations of every size for the design, construction, and operations of roads and bridges, rails and transit, water and wastewater, public works and utilities, buildings and campuses, mining and industrial facilities.

Their offerings, powered by the iTwin platform for infrastructure digital twins, include iTwin products, MicroStation and Bentley Open Applications for modeling and simulation, sequence software for geo professionals and Bentley Infrastructure Cloud encompassing ProjectWise for project delivery, Synchro for construction management, and AssetWise for asset operations.

Once again, I'm your host Jason Price. Plug in and stay fully charged in the discussion by hopping into the community at EnergyCentral.com. And we'll see you next time at the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast.

About Energy Central Podcasts

The ‘Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast’ features conversations with thought leaders in the utility sector. At least twice monthly, we connect with an Energy Central Power Industry Network community member to discuss compelling topics that impact professionals who work in the power industry. Some podcasts may be a continuation of thought-provoking posts or discussions started in the community or with an industry leader that is interested in sharing their expertise and doing a deeper dive into hot topics or issues relevant to the industry.

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The Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast is hosted by Jason Price, Community Ambassador of Energy Central. Jason is a Business Development Executive at West Monroe, working in the East Coast Energy and Utilities Group. Jason is joined in the podcast booth by the producer of the podcast, Matt Chester, who is also the Community Manager of Energy Central and energy analyst/independent consultant in energy policy, markets, and technology.  

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