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Episode #170: "Navigating the Complexities of Integrated Planning" with Steve Martz, VP of Integrated Planning at Xcel Energy [an Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast]

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In an ever-evolving energy landscape, strategic planning becomes paramount for utilities aiming to navigate the complexities of modernizing the grid while meeting environmental goals. In this episode of Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast, we delve into the world of integrated resource planning (IRP) with Steve Martz, Vice President of Integrated Planning at Xcel Energy. With extensive experience in the utility sector, Steve brings insights into how utilities like Xcel are redefining their visions for carbon-free electricity and net-zero natural gas service.

From the challenges of navigating regional differences to future-proofing plans amidst technological advancements and shifting customer expectations, Steve sheds light on the critical role of integrated planning in shaping the future of the power sector. Listen in as Steve takes podcast host Jason Price and producer Matt Chester behind the scenes, unraveling the intricacies of IRP and its importance in guiding utilities towards sustainable and reliable energy futures. From the complexities of generation planning to the broader considerations of funding allocation and customer engagement, Steve offers invaluable perspectives on steering utilities through the myriad challenges and opportunities of the evolving energy landscape.

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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. This is 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 am Jason Price, energy Central podcast host and director with West Monroe, coming to you from New York City. And I'm joined once again by the producer of the show, Matt Chester, dialing in from Orlando, Florida. Matt, we're diving into the world of integrated planning on the grid today. Can you give us a quick reminder about how utilities define the integrated resource planning or IRP process?

 

Matt Chester::

Absolutely, Jason. So the IRP, it's a comprehensive approach that utilities employ to strategically assess and decide upon what is ultimately the optimal combination of energy sources to meet their future demand reliably and sustainably. So this entails a thorough analysis of factors like economic viability, grid reliability increasingly includes environmental considerations and ongoing technological advancements. And by evaluating all these elements, utilities through the IRP process can formulate what their long-term blueprint is for generating and delivering electricity that aligns with their present needs and their future challenges.

 

Jason Price:

Thanks, Matt. That primer will help us as we dive more deeply into the topic with today's guest, Steve Martz, vice President of integrated planning at Xcel Energy in Denver, Colorado. And he also brings with him a wealth of experience in the utility sector that includes time at SolCal Gas and Sempra energy before making his way up the ranks at Xcel. This role is one that assuredly keeps him busy and is more than ever under the microscope in today's utility landscape. So let's not wait any further. Steve Martz, welcome to the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast.

 

Steve Martz:

Yeah, thank you very much. Appreciate being here. Thank you for the opportunity and really looking forward to getting into some really interesting topics with you guys.

 

Jason Price:

Terrific, and we're thrilled to have you here, Steve. So let's start with letting you credentialize yourself. We mentioned you're the VP of Integrated Planning at Xcel Energy, but how did you find yourself in this position and what has prepared you to take on such a highly visible and increasingly important role at Xcel's vision for carbon-free electricity and net-zero natural gas service?

 

Steve Martz:

It's a great question. And it's one of those kinds of things right in life where you blink your eyes for a moment and you kind of wake up a second later and you go, holy moly, how did I get to where I am? And I can't believe so much time has changed. So maybe some of the facts and figures are helpful here, so to speak. So I've been in energy for, I guess about coming up in 18 years or so. And the joke I kind of like to make usually with utility people is what's the one thing that we all have in common? Well, none of us ever dreamed as a kid, this is what we'd be doing. When I was five, I thought about being a fireman, an astronaut. I didn't really think about being a utility engineer or a utility executive or working on utility strategy.

But that said, it's been a tremendously rewarding career. I've gained a massive appreciation for what we do in the power sector over the tenure that I've been here. And you're right, I did start on the West Coast. I'm from California originally and went to school out there. And coming out of college, I'm an engineer by background, actually a chemical engineer by background. At least when I went to college, a lot of chemies. What they did is they went and worked in oil and gas companies and so grew up in LA kind of thing. It's not a huge market for chemical engineers. And so when I was looking at choices out of school, it was kind of, well, I could go work in the oil patch and it could be somewhere really cool and exciting like Southeast Asia and Thailand, or it could be maybe like the Northwest territory of Canada.

And so I made a very personal choice to maybe avoid a little bit of volatility on that end. And through a number of friends, primarily through the investment banking sector, I found myself into energy. So from there, it's been amazing. I quickly realized that the energy field's massively diverse and interesting. And so when I started working in system planning, actually through kind of the council of my grandpa of all people, we started to dig into our 10 K. I was working for Sempra Energy, dig into our 10 K and trying to figure out, well, how do we make money? And I remember kind of a proud 21-year-old kid with my college degree coming home with my first couple paychecks, probably thinking I know a little bit too much about the world. And he was asking me, testing me, well, how's your company make money? What do you guys do?

And I realized quickly, well, I guess I don't know. Here's my job. But how does the company make money? So we actually dug into it together, and I'm not being facetious, we really did read the 300 page 10K together, and it really opened my eyes to, okay, this is how the business works. And so actually became really deliberate and strategic for me from there to really think through, okay, I'm working on the distribution side of the business now, but I wanted learn the transmission side, then I wanted to learn the production side and then I want to learn the market development side, then I want to learn the R&D side of things. So it kind of almost created a rubric for me that I've been pretty disciplined about following as I've contemplated career choices and challenges. And so I've gotten to the point where I've been able to work on a little bit of everything.

I worked on Sempra's L&G business, I worked in the marketing and R&D businesses. And in system planning and then 2015 for personal reasons, an opportunity popped up to move away from the coast to Colorado. And so I said yes to that. I personally think that career risk is a good thing to take on. And so my family and I uprooted moved to Denver, which is where I'm located. And since I've been at Xcel, I've had the pleasure of being over system planning, asset development, engineering, and now I'm in this role. I'm looking out for our vision and strategy. We're the head of integrated planning and my job entails planning for our generation, distribution, transmission and natural gas businesses.

 

Jason Price:

That's a very interesting background and no doubt the reading of a 10K can give you some deep and practical insight into a company. And no doubt, most people don't really do that. So they don't fully understand what a utility and energy system does and how it operates. So I want to talk more about the IRP. You focus on looking at and planning the IRP, which is really around the generation side of the distribution business. It's fair to assume that the general public does not understand how the system operates and nor do many people inside the utility necessarily understand it as well. So it is a rather complex world. An IRP is just three letters, but it's a complex set of three letters. Why don't you share it with us? What exactly goes on with an IRP?

 

Steve Martz:

Yeah, a very fair point, and I would agree with you. These are massively complex organisms and they take a lot of work and effort to be successful. I guess I have a little bit of a hot take for you though on this, and I think we make them complex and we might even make them more complex than they need to be. I really enjoy talking to just people, our customers, the public, our stakeholders, our employees within the company. If you work around me and you get to know me a little bit, you'll find quickly that I talk almost exclusively in analogies and I'm usually rattling on about one of a couple things. I'm usually using an analogy of how do we build a car? How do you fly an airplane? How do you make a really great cell phone? Or how do you run a lemonade stand?

And what I've found in my time in industry is I have yet to come up with an example of some really challenging very complex technical thing within the power sector that you can't actually explain In one of those four things that I mentioned. I think very intuitively, people actually do understand how this works. And if you can meet them on level playing field and talk about it in the form of a car or an airplane, a cell phone or a lemonade stand, you can actually, with not a lot of effort, make some really quick steps to communicate what it is that you're doing. Give you an example of that. Think about Mercedes a very admirable brand that exists throughout the planet. Very, very strong brand presence up there with other luxury goods. And you think about it, there's 8 billion some odd people on the planet.

By and large, almost everybody knows what Mercedes is about. They're able to convey an entire design language and brand position without really providing too many objective facts or figures around their products. We're able to know what that is intuitively and connect to it really quickly. And I think utilities have an opportunity to start to do more of that. And so what I think about in terms of the complexity of an IRP, it's really a simple way of looking at a value chain. The simplest model or mental model of that that I could give to you and our listeners here is the electric system is no more complex than there's a source of supply. There's a transmission system that takes that supply in big chunks, right? Big units of energy, and it moves it from large market areas. For example, from Denver to say like Santa Fe. There's a distribution system that then takes those units of power and breaks them down into smaller units power and puts it onto every city street and things like that. And then there's a meter where it's actually consumed.

So if you think about it, consumer goods, commodities, financial markets, they all work exactly the same. So I think everyone, our customers, our employees, is very capable of understanding the complexity of an IRP. And so kind of using the analogy here, when you do a big IRP, right, you quote prosecute or you litigate a big integrated resource plan, all you're really talking about with your state utility commission is what's going to be our source of supply. How are we going to make those widgets? We're going to establish a planning period. So it's 2024 now. So what the process entails is you talk to your commission, you establish, and maybe some of this is in rule or maybe some of it's in legislation or some of it's part of a negotiation you agree to, but basically you create a design basis for the future you say, here's how long I'm going to plan for. Here's the widgets of energy that I think we should make.

The hot topic on the street the last 10 years now is how should we make those units of energy? That's the whole thermal versus renewable energy debate and where the industry is generally going without. So that's all that's actually really being done with an IRP is it's a process to put those questions out on the table, utilize a robust stakeholder process to almost, in a sense democratize energy a little bit here to get to defining the technical attributes of what the system needs, and then it's a process for making decisions around those that you do hand in hand with your commission and with your state political leaders to identify the best energy future for your state and for your customer's needs.

 

Jason Price:

But it's a big undertaking, all right, and we can't minimize it. So in this case though, Xcel is in eight states, does this mean that you need eight different IRPs and how do you navigate across such a wide region of the country addressing IRP? So just walk us through that process.

 

Steve Martz:

Yeah, it's a great question. And you're right. I like to talk in analogies. I want to make sure that these concepts are connectable for people that don't work intimately in them in the way that I do. And so certainly warrants recognition that these are massively complex and there's an army of thousands upon thousands of people that work on these, not just within Xcel but also with advocacy agencies, with commission staff, with legislative staff, with customer advocacy groups and things like that. So you're right. So Xcel is an eight-state jurisdictional utility company. We operate in North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Colorado, Texas, and New Mexico. So probably the first question on the table is we don't do one resource plan for all those eight states together. We kind of do them by system and the United States generally has three "electric grids", there's the western grid, the eastern grid, and there's the Texas ERCOT grid.

So we have systems that actually span the western and the eastern grid. So we look at integrated resource plans from a system perspective. So tactically we file four resource plans across our eight states, and so we do one in the Dakotas, one in Minnesota, and that covers the overall. Upper Midwest region because that that's one interconnected system. We do one for Colorado and then we do one in New Mexico, but we kind of use it in both New Mexico and Texas. So if you think about the diversity that I'm talking about here, there's a lot of different things that would go into how we think about a resource plan. The customers in all of the states that we serve are certainly different. We have high residential penetration in some of our markets and we have other parts of our system where we have mostly commercial and industrial load.

In fact, a lot, some of our largest customers I should say are industrial customers in the Texas, New Mexico oil producing regions like the Permian Basin and things like that. And so there's not really a one-size-fits-all process here. So that's why we have diversity in terms of how we do our resource plans. There's also things like climate differences, there's differences in the resources that we use. So as an example, we have hydroelectric power like run of river power in the upper Midwest as well as run of river power in Colorado and some pumped hydroelectric power. But in a place like Texas or Mexico where there's not as much water, we don't have those types of resources. So that's why we have to rely on this process where we do multiple resource plans to kind of tool into how's the system perform based on the assets that are out there, as well as based on what the customers need the system to do to provide electricity as a service.

And that's how we kind of wrap that together. Resource plans, I think at warrant's commenting as well, they take a long time to do. They're not like a one-week kind of activity. There's like I said, a lot of people that participate in these. It takes Xcel anywhere from 12 months to several years to actually commission, start, perform and then conclude a resource plan to a point that we have certainty with our regulators around what does the resource plan include for resources, what our customer electricity demand is going to be into the future, and then a timeline for how we'll put the system together and build the resources that are needed.

 

Jason Price:

It's quite an undertaking. That's why we have you on the show to help us understand the complexity here. So we appreciate you taking the time to help us understand all this. So thank you. So from your perspective, is the US power sector on the right path because this plan that you're looking at is to decarbonize too, so you need to think about the energy mix, the generation mix overall. So where should the focus be and are we having the right conversations to get to where we need to go?

 

Steve Martz:

Yeah, it's a fascinating topic and it's been really interesting for me to see in the almost two decades now that I've been in industry. The reality is there was some interest in the power sector, both electricity and natural gas that all include both a little bit interest out there before again, especially coming from California, I think everybody remembers some of the power challenges, the quote rolling brownouts and rolling blackouts that occurred out there. So I think there are some public awareness out there. But you go back in time, definitely an older school model where utilities kind did their thing. Generally customers paid their bills and all was kind of right with the world and there'd be kind of a minor issue here or there. The world's changed tremendously and the things that I think about is just how much we've changed both as a society but also intergenerationally.

And the themes that I've seen are that as there's new generations coming into the economy, I'll call it, right, that are buying homes, renting homes, becoming adults as it were, paying their own utility bills, there's been kind of a groundswell and sea change towards higher and more interest in where energy is coming from. And that's something I've learned from other folks within our industry as well as folks from outside of our industry, actually from the consumer good industry as well as the cosmetics industry is really rethinking how customers and consumers want to participate is really, really, really critical. And so that's the path that we're on right now is there's a lot more interest, which has generated a lot more concepts, but it's also frankly generated a lot more debate. So it's a little challenging right now to just give you a one word or short clip on are we on the right path or not?

It's a little bit hard to know because there's so much golf left to play. I'd say we're on whole number three or four of this whole energy transition with the full 18 that we still have to complete here. Where I do have a little bit of alarm is how we're starting to debate some of these topics. And you're right, Xcel is absolutely at the front and leading edge of the energy transition and decarbonizing the electric sector. We are really proud of the fact that we're the first utility to announce carbon-free electricity vision by 2050. We're also first to announce a net-zero natural gas vision for our natural gas business, and we're also one of the leading utilities that has a vision for where we want to be with electric vehicle saturation in our markets as well and doing everything we can to prompt and enable adoption of EVs in our service territories.

So that's where we're going from a vision perspective. The part that's concerning me though is that as we talk about some of these tough concepts, there can be a little bit of an all-or-nothing attitude out there in terms of how do we get to that next marginal unit of power production as well as the next marginal unit of decarbonization. And I firmly believe that the electric grid that we've built as a society over the last a hundred plus years is probably one of the most important things that we've ever done as mankind. It's proven to be the lifeblood and of our economy. It's offered us wealth, prosperity, and health. And so I want to ensure that the dialogue is constructive and we ensure that we preserve our consciousness, like our technical consciousness around the importance of reliability and safety. And so that's kind of the tough part.

Some of the first units of decarbonization that's occurred in industry, were kind of some of the easier ones. I mean, the reality is coal has had a role in developing and in supporting the grid over the last 100 plus years. Some of those things were just kind of naturally end of life, and so we've had challenging capital decisions to make out there. If you have a coal plant that's 50, 60 years old. You need to reinvest in that asset, should you reinvest in it or should you move towards wind? By and large, the industry has chosen more economic choices, especially with tailwind items like production tax credits and investment tax credits and things like that that help make the decision. But as an industry, we've been able to navigate some of those easier choices earlier on in this energy transition. Where we're going though is we're quickly getting into the harder parts of this, and so we're having to make different choices around what resources we'll use to make power.

And so the balance, as I see it, right, how do we at least stay on the right path is balancing costs for our customers while decarbonizing our grid at the same time, but also ensuring improving reliability and the conversations that are happening. It's definitely the conversations that Xcel's happening is working with our regulators to put specific focus on modeling our system for reliability, coming up with the right technical attributes that we should be designing our system for that preserve that reliability, but then also looking at the bilateral value proposition here of also showing how we could decarbonize at the same time. So those are the kinds of conversations that we're having with our commissions, with our customers and with our regulators more broadly is balancing both of those to keep us on the right path for decarbonization and ensuring that we can meet our customer's needs.

 

Jason Price:

Sure. So talk to us more about the process of developing the IRP, especially with respect to the influence of technology and the rate of technology and innovating our system. How do you develop all that future-proof your plan to a degree that makes sense and remains a meaningful plan to follow given this rapid change in technology and innovation in general? Talk to us about how do you incorporate all that in the decision-making process?

 

Steve Martz:

Yeah, it's a great question. I think it's actually, personally, it's a little bit of an existential question for me, so I'm glad you asked it. And I'll spend just a quick second describing my position a little bit more. So at Xcel, we kind of saw this challenge looming in front of us. I mean, ultimately at the end of the day, utilities spend a lot of capital on behalf of our customer and we want to endeavor to always be good stewards of our customer's capital. But when you look at what we have to do, all the things that we're all talking about in terms of the energy transition, the revolution, whatever term that you want to use here, when we've done our math on it, and you look at cross-sectional flows of energy across our economy, so looking at not just power, but also the energy produced and then consumed between power oil, gas oil and gas liquids, things like that.

We think that with all of the policy that our voters across the country have voted in, there's an opportunity that there'd be about three times the amount of energy demand needed on the electric system by 2050, which is extremely daunting proposition when you think about it. What we realize if we use a lot of capital and our job as utilities is to help allocate capital into the best spots to ensure that we meet our customer's needs and that the grid stays reliable and safe. We determined that as a hypothesis. We do not want to ever have to arc grid twice.

And so what that means is if we were to just solely rely on determinism, we only kind of look out a couple years ahead in terms of where our customers are needed. There's a lot of risk out there, and what we might find is we could make a poor decision around we think this is the best power plant to build right now, but then four or five years from now, something changes with our customer's behavior, consumer behavior or things like that, and we find, oh, oh no, this plant's no longer useful or it doesn't produce the energy that I need, or it doesn't produce the energy that I need when I need it.

So we realized through our hypothesis, we don't want to build it twice. Our customers can't afford for us to build it twice. We have to allocate capital in the exact right way. We came up with this idea of, okay, we need one unified approach and vision for how we'll plan our system and develop our system strategy. And so that's where our overall team called integrated system planning, that's part of my organization and where I report into within Xcel energy comes into play. And so the way that I like to think about this is kind of like actually using an analogy, sorry, I did warn you guys. I'd use some analogies today. The one I like here though is it's like building a house and when you think about we've got to build the grid again, we built the grid 100 plus years ago. It worked for the first wave of electrification, electrifying people's homes, giving them appliances and lighting.

Then we built it a little bit again, we added capacity for air conditioning. That was in the '60s and '70s. But since then, we've really been focused as a business model on basically run things to obsolescence or failure and repair when it's broken. And beyond that, the overall theme has been focused on conservation and energy efficiency concepts. Where we're sitting right now though, again going back to you layer on all this policy, we might 3x the amount of energy that the grid has to serve, we realize that customers are electrifying even more parts of their lives, and so we have to establish the vision for what we have to do. So going back to my house analogy, that's my role within integrated system planning is I'm in the architect. I'm here to work with our customers and help them and our regulators as well as our company kind of draw those proverbial lines in the sand out to 2050 to say, okay, here's what we want the house to do.

Now, we've always wanted a ranch style home. So just a single floor. We've always wanted an open concept kitchen. We've always wanted this many bedrooms or this many bathrooms. We've always wanted a great patio off the kitchen or something like that. So we're here to create that vision, almost like that artist rendering. That's my role in all this. We also have a modeling and analytics team, and I like to think of them as almost like the civil engineer. So they take our artist rendering our vision as the architect and they drop the blueprints. They're here to help us define based on the physics of the system, here's how we can actually do this. Here's how power is really going to flow across these transmission lines, these substations, these distribution lines, and then into our customer's meters to give them the things that we need. And then we also have a conceptual design team, which I like to think of as almost like the general contractor, and they're here to pull everything together for building house.

We need tile guy, we need someone that can do drywall, someone's going to have to do paint, here's the schedule to do this, here's the permits to do all this. And so this is our approach to how we future-proof the plan a little bit is I put all of that into the bucket of creating the design basis for the system and establishing now what's the art of the possible in terms of what could be true to get to 2050. Again, trying to avoid our hypothesis of we don't want to build up twice, we don't want capital to be mis-allocated or to flow where it shouldn't, such that we can always maintain affordability and reliability. What we've found through all this, we've been doing this for about two years now, what we found through all this is there is absolutely a massive role for emerging technology and innovative technologies across the entire value chain.

We need new technology in both power production, transmission, distribution, as well as natural gas. And we've got a number of programs across Xcel as well as number of, I think pretty class leading filings that we've put out there with our regulators that have not only identified the places on our system that we need new technology to come in, but we've also proposed pilots as well as incentive structures for ourselves and for our customers to lean into those technologies. And again, it really spans a very wide gamut from really leaning hard into long duration storage and working with national laboratories, NRELs in our backyard here in Denver. We're a very frequent collaborator with them. We meet with them nearly every week on important topics, but also working with EEI as well as the American Gas Association and multiple entities to put as many irons in the fire as we can because we know that we're going to have to harvest a number of technologies to get from where we are today to the design basis for our customers in 2050, all the while meeting our decarbonization needs.

 

Jason Price:

So the IRP is a public document, right? Every utility has to publish its IRP,

 

Steve Martz:

Correct?

 

Jason Price:

Right. So my question is how does the public, particularly with an engaging customer base, much different than customers of the past, how do they influence your decision making process, your team's involvement in the overall creation of the IRP? Tell us about that.

 

Steve Martz:

Yeah, great question. That's been really interesting to see, especially over the last several years, there's been a lot more broad, both national and regional and local media interest in the work that utilities are doing. And so it's been really interesting to see us emerge into a limelight that we've honestly, going back 10 years we probably didn't really think we'd ever be in. It's created a lot of customer enthusiasm to participate. From a mechanical basis, which I think is a little bit of the basis of your question actually is you're right, this is something I'm really proud of and I proudly tell my neighbors about the realities. There are people that are unhappy with utility costs, things like that. Always happy and proud to tell them, look, it is a highly public process. There's a number of ways to participate, and honestly, there's very few secrets.

And so personally, I've been a part of several dozen rate cases and rate proceedings as well as resource plan proceedings and things like that, my time and energy. And what I think is so cool about it is each of those processes has either a call it dictated or delegated stakeholder process, just because what's in the commission's rules or that's in the legislative rules, or sometimes there's just self-selected processes wherein we bring stakeholders in. And so depending on the topic area, we're kind of focused on integrated resource plans here for this conversation, we have mechanisms where we actually go out and through our stakeholder teams, we involve the advocacy agencies that are out there. And those could be, again, I think I mentioned this before, consumer advocacy agencies, which are not really focused on decarbonization per se, but they're just really worried about bottom line cost of utility service.

We also work with environmental policy and advocacy agencies, which are also concerned with cost, but they also are concerned with decarbonizing at the same time, trade and utility groups and many others. So there's a lot of different opportunities for people to participate. We also publish a lot of information on our websites as we work through these processes. And so it's really just about creating opportunities as well as the awareness of where the avenues are that are out there that people can connect with. That's definitely something utilities have been a little bit challenged with, right? We don't have the mass market brand appeal that major consumer products do, like a luxury car or a TV manufacturer. I'm fully appreciative of the fact that people within our jurisdiction know our name, but beyond that, it can be challenging to find the right information.

So that's something we're always working on and looking to tool up internally to greater efficacy is creating those synergies and connecting the synapses with our customers so they know where they can get information, they can know how to digest the information, and then they can know where to go to follow up to either participate directly, offer feedback, or watch from just a little bit more dynamic position.

That's why I started the conversation at the beginning of all this, noting that I don't think we have to make this complex. I mean, you're right. At the end of the day, what gets written into law by an army of attorneys on both sides is really complex, really esoteric language around billing determinants and inertial floor and planning studies and accreditation factors for resources and effective load carrying capacity and things like that. But again, I don't think it has to. And I think to be successful long-term for people to be a part of this, we've got to bridge that gap to make it a lot more consumable for our customers. And I said a little bit ago, I personally think that constructing the electric grid the way that we have over the last 100 years is the most important thing that we've probably done as a society, second to maybe the wheel or fire, I suppose personally, I think the coolest thing we've ever done as a society is I'm a big space geek and I love history.

So I think the moon landing is probably one of the coolest things, one of the most impressive things that we've ever done in really short order. The Russians put up Sputnik I think in like 57, and then by 69 we had put a guy on the moon and it's 12 years. I think what's so appealing about that and what caused such a broad show of public support for that, it was so visceral and it was so tangible, is people could look up into the night sky, they could see the moon, they could see the faces of the astronauts, and they can kind of put two and two together and quickly understand, okay, I understand what the moonshot is all about.

I understand why we're going there, I'm understanding how we're going there, I understand the risk and I understand the gravity, no pun intended, of what this's going to take. I think utilities have a big opportunity to kind of lean into a model like that. I get it. I'm realistic and I fully appreciate the fact that we'll probably never be as cool as the quote moon landing, but I think there's a way that we can kind of connect this together better for our customers so we can help them understand what is that moonshot that we, the utility, right, not just Xcel, we're not the only utility in the country. Of course there's several hundred, but each utility is shooting for some kind of moonshot, and the impetus is on us to help us define what does that moon for our customers. And it can mean a lot of different things. It can mean decarbonization, it can mean reliability, it can mean so many different things, but we've got to get that moon out there. I think that's the plan. I think that's how we do that.

 

Jason Price:

I like that. I really do. That's great. It's such sound words, so I really appreciate giving us that feedback. And we want to appreciate you in the following manner. You've given us an opportunity to really peel back the curtain and understanding the IRP. But now we're at what we call the lightning round, Steve, where we get to peel back the curtain to learn a little bit more about you, the person rather than you, the professional. And that's done with our lightning round where we're going to ask you a few questions and we ask you to keep your response to one word or phrase. So are you ready?

 

Steve Martz:

Let's do it.

 

Jason Price:

All right. As a utility executive, who in your household tends to leave the lights on the most?

 

Steve Martz:

So, I'm trying to make sure I keep it quick. I have a three to 5-year-old. Every night there's a dance party and they leave the dance lights on. So it's definitely the kids. I turn them off religiously.

 

Jason Price:

How do you balance your sanity given a rigorous and high profile job?

 

Steve Martz:

I would say we fit all the Colorado stereotypes. There's a plethora of Patagonia jackets lying around the house, and those are our little vehicles to doing all the cool Colorado stuff, hiking, camping, all those kinds of things.

 

Jason Price:

What's your favorite comfort meal or snack?

 

Steve Martz:

I would have to say just a plain old sandwich actually.

 

Jason Price:

What career path do you imagine for yourself when you were growing up?

 

Steve Martz:

Everybody told me I would be a lawyer, but the apple doesn't fall far the tree, so I end up in energy just like my family.

 

Jason Price:

What's the best part of your job?

 

Steve Martz:

Getting to define that moonshot.

 

Jason Price:

We've been asking guests to the podcast this year to share a question they want answered by a future guest. So for you, Steve, we have Todd Allen of the University of Michigan highlighted that Gladys Knight is famous in her own right, but she had the group, the pips behind her who didn't get the same fame and fortune, but were critical for her success. So Todd's question to you is who are your pips?

 

Steve Martz:

Oh, that's the easiest question ever, man. I mean, I come from the operations role. That was my last role, so easy one for me. The pips behind me, all the stuff that I do does not matter without our front line. So our linemen, our fitters, our welders, our first responders, our emergency. Troublemen, and folks like that, they're the people that keep the grid in the natural gas system operating 365 24/7. They keep it safe, they keep it reliable.

 

Jason Price:

Agreed. And now, what question would you leave for our future podcast guest in this lightning round?

 

Steve Martz:

That's a great one. I love that. I love that interplay. So thanks for challenging me and testing me. So I'm riffing this one just a little bit here, but I guess I always like a little bit of controversy and to be a little bit provocateur, I suppose. So here it goes. I'd ask your next guest what is one thing that no one is talking about in the energy sector, but everybody should be talking about it.

 

Jason Price:

Okay, well done. And for navigating the lightning around, we want to give you the final words. So what final piece of advice would you hope listeners take away from today's conversation?

 

Steve Martz:

I'd say it's a little bit of a theme of our conversation. You had this thread and a number of your questions, which were challenging and interesting for me, so thank you again for the chance to talk with you guys. It was really fun and enlightening. I'd say there has to be participation. And my job is to come up with that vision, that architecture define the moonshot. I can't do it in a black box though. We certainly have some opinions on where our customers are going, but we kind of got to maybe break the position. We have a little bit of this passivity towards energy and start to really engage with our customers. And so when we call, we do put out surveys, how do you guys want to use energy? Please help us by participating in that and just know that we really are listening.

We've got a tremendous customer base. We serve several million Americans across our operating territories, and our job is we want to try to listen to them all so that we can really help define that 2050. It's the moonshot that we're aiming for and we have a pretty good sense of what our rocket engine looks like, and we might know how we get into space, but we don't yet have the lunar module figured out. We don't know how to yet land on the moon, and that's where I think the customer voice can be critical.

The other thing I'd say in short is let's not underestimate the effort that this is going to require. I have said it a couple of times on our show here today. We've built the grid that we have over 100 years, and there's been a tremendous amount of talent, intellectual property, effort, blood, sweat, and tears that have gone into building that thing. And now we're looking to make it three times bigger, so to speak, to service all those needs. And so we're going to have to kind of roll up. What I think America is frankly really good at is roll up our sleeves and grit our teeth, and with enough might and determination, go build this thing. But it's not just us in a black box. We have to do that with our customers walking hand in hand with us to ensure that we are able to provide you guys with what everyone needs.

 

Jason Price:

Insightful words, no doubt. Steve, we really appreciate it. We appreciate your time and let's keep the conversation going in the comments section. So certainly keep an eye out for the active and engaging energy essential community. But until then, we just want to thank you for sharing your insights on today's episode of the podcast.

 

Steve Martz:

Yeah, thank you very much for having me.

 

Jason Price:

Once again, you can always reach Steve through the Energy Central platform where he welcomes your questions and comments. And if our listeners have a question they want to have answered in a future episode of the podcast and even hear their own voice at an oncoming on an upcoming episode, we've started this year offering the opportunity. So listen, listeners can go to the SpeakPipe link. We'll leave in the show notes where you can leave us a recorded message including a question you're eager to have answered for a future guest. We'll listen through them, pick out the right guest in an upcoming lineup to address them, and you'll hear yourself as part of the conversation. We also want to give a shout out of thanks to the podcast sponsors that made today's episode possible.

Thanks to West Monroe. West Monroe was a leading partner for the nation's largest electric gas and water utilities, working together to drive grid modernization, clean energy, and workforce transformation. West Monroe's Comprehensive Services are designed to support utilities in advancing their digital transformation, building resilient operations, securing federal funding, and providing regulatory advisory support. With a multidisciplinary team of experts, West Monroe offers a holistic approach that addresses the challenges of the grid today and provides innovative solutions for a sustainable future. 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.

The ‘Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast’ is the premiere podcast series from Energy Central, a Power Industry Network of Communities built specifically for professionals in the electric power industry and a place where professionals can share, learn, and connect in a collaborative environment. Supported by leading industry organizations, our mission is to help global power industry professionals work better. Since 1995, we’ve been a trusted news and information source for professionals working in the power industry, and today our managed communities are a place for lively discussions, debates, and analysis to take place. If you’re not yet a member, visit www.EnergyCentral.com to register for free and join over 200,000 of your peers working in the power industry.

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.  

If you want to be a guest on a future episode of the Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast, let us know! We’ll be pulling guests from our community members who submit engaging content that gets our community talking, and perhaps that next guest will be you! Likewise, if you see an article submitted by a fellow Energy Central community member that you’d like to see broken down in more detail in a conversation, feel free to send us a note to nominate them.  For more information, contact us at [email protected]. Podcast interviews are free for Expert Members and professionals who work for a utility.  We have package offers available for solution providers and vendors. 

Happy listening, and stay tuned for our next episode! Like what you hear, have a suggestion for future episodes, or a question for our guest? Leave a note in the comments below.

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: