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Episode #95: 'Debating Utilities' Role In Transportation Electrification' With Esri's Bill Meehan & Pat Hohl [an Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast]

The evolution of transportation systems to be electrified has been a rising story in the power sector for years, and thanks to advancing technologies and progressing electric vehicle (EV) policies it is also poised to be the defining story for utilities over the next decade or two. EVs bring the electric power sector and the transportation industry together like never before, and because the changes needed are so unprecedented, power leaders don't have a singular playbook to follow on how these coming years should play out.

 

 

While thought leaders in the energy space agree that change is coming and utilities must prepare, the precise strategy for this transformation does not have a consensus. As these conversations play out, geographic information systems (GIS) and related tools will be critical, but the exact way to utilize these solutions even sparks debate. And so on this episode of the Energy Central Power Perspective Podcast, returning guests Bill Meehan and Pat Hohl, both Directors of Electric Utility Solutions at Esri, join podcast host Jason Price and producer Matt Chester to take these debates to the airwaves. What should utility leaders be doing today to prepare for the EV future of tomorrow? What are the best ways to integrate GIS tools in that process? And how exactly will the next 5, 10, 20 years play out? Bill and Pat go point-counterpoint in the Power Perspectives Podcast's first debate.

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

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TRANSCRIPT

Jason Price: 

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast. This is the show that brings together leading minds in energy to discuss the latest challenges and trends, transforming and modernizing the utility industry of the future. And a quick thank you to Esri, our sponsor of today's show. Now let's talk energy.

Jason Price: 
I'm your host, Jason Price of Energy Central and director with West Monroe coming to you from New York city. And with me as always from Orlando, Florida is Energy Central producer and community manager, Matt Chester. Matt, today we're going to talk about the intersection of the power sector and the transportation industry. Depending on where you sit on the value chain, the relationship between the utilities and transportation could be viewed as friend or foe. And success of decarbonizing our roadways will require cooperation on both sides. However, you have a fast moving entrepreneurial momentum driving innovation in the transportation industry. Today cars can run purely on battery and function much like an iPhone, while our utilities are still trying to upgrade a 100 year old grid. The utilities are not fast moving and can only spend capital upon approval of its regulators. So innovation comes slow and steady. Matt, share a bit of the backdrop of this situation.

Matt Chester: 
With pleasure, Jason. So the push to decarbonized transportation, the sector which currently stands as the greatest contributor to CO2 emissions across the United States has ramped up in recent years, while Tesla kicked off the electrical vehicle revolution and other auto makers have caught up and made great strides to electrify their offerings. The path forward may not be as clear cut as some people think. And further for the utility industry, the ability to try and look into the crystal ball to anticipate the scale, location, and other characteristics of this new transportation sector is of critical importance.

Jason Price: 
Thanks for that, Matt. So in power perspectives, we have the privilege of tapping into a considerable brain trust of energy executives. And who better to go point, counterpoint on the transportation electrification topic than with Pat Hohl and Bill Meehan of Esri. If you haven't had the pleasure of listening to their first appearances in our show, first, let me recommend that you revisit episodes 10, 12, and 80 of the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast. But then let me also reintroduce our guests. Pat Hohl is a director of Electric Utility Solutions at Esri. Pat Hohl oversees the planning and execution of Esri's go to market strategies in the power sector, and he has pioneered GIS for this market over the course of his 35 year career.

Jason Price: 
Pat, welcome once again to the podcast.

Pat Hohl: 
Thank you very much. It's wonderful to be here.

Jason Price: 
And joining him to make up this dynamic duo is Bill Meehan, director of Electric Utility Solutions at Esri. Bill's time with Esri spans over 15 years, giving him the expertise to write a book titled, Empowering Electric and Gas Utilities with GIS. He was a guest on the podcast in May, 2020 on the 12th episode of the podcast titled, To unlock the modern utility, GIS is key. Bill welcome back.

Bill Meehan: 
Well, thanks again. And I think you stated it well, between Pat and myself and I can't keep track, we've got like we're heading towards a century worth of experience in this business.

Jason Price: 
Absolutely. And then we're thrilled to have you here to share it. So today is actually going to be a first for us on power perspectives. We've had multiple guests before, but they've usually come on the same side of the perspective or project that we're discussing. Today though, the topic of decarbonizing transportation has brought Bill and Pat to us on either side of the debate. So let's start with some opening statements that will position each of you, where you stand on this view of the future of transportation. Now, both of you see the need to remove carbon from our transportation systems and before looking from the utility perspectives to do so. But I believe each of you has a different perspective on the role and response of utilities to transportation electrification. So Pat, let's start with you. What do you see as the key to the goal of transportation electrification?

Pat Hohl: 
Sure. Our audience is utilities and as Bill mentioned, I've spent my career in utilities. And throughout that career, we have always had three goals, safe, reliable, cost effective service. And I think that still holds. It's really important to recognize in this discussion that gasoline is a tremendously powerful fuel. Six pounds of gasoline that would fit into one gallon container is the same as pushing a car 30 miles. And if you think about the amount of work it would take to push a car 30 miles, that represents a lot of energy. So the migration to electricity requires a lot more electricity. In fact, I was just reading this morning that current estimates are about 30% more capacity. That is a huge change. And so, utilities have to respond to a tremendous change in the sales of their product while they maintain safe, reliable service at cost effective rates.

Pat Hohl: 
We just had Labor Day weekend and due to shortages in electricity supply, the California ISO issued flex alerts ahead of Labor Day weekend asking people not to run their appliances or charge their cars between 4:00 and 9:00 PM. I kind of make a habit of asking non utility people about their view of electric cars and they hear these kind of messages and they see the disconnect between the push to electrified transportation and the lack of electricity. So I think clearly we have a lot of work to do. There are an awful lot of factors that enter into this discussion, but I think the role of utilities at this point is to make sense of the landscape and develop a good plan.

Jason Price: 
That's very interesting and a great juxtaposition of what's going on in California certainly. Let's go over to Bill now. So Bill, while I know you and Pat agree on a lot of aspects of the power industry these days, you aren't a hundred percent alignment with him on this question. So what do you see as the key transportation electrification, from your perspective?

Bill Meehan: 
Yeah. Well, thanks Jason. So I kind of see it a little bit differently in that, it's not just about how utilities can meet the load. And I think, as we look at, as Pat points at this, there's a ton of new load going to be required. There's 275 million cars on the road. So what a tremendous increase in the amount of electricity, if we take the BTUs that just drive those cars today and convert that to electricity. That's sometimes what we like to call a moonshot. I mean, this isn't just kind of a little transition. It's a big thing. It's a big deal. So I think actually we've got to look more holistically around the whole decarbonization of transportation. And I sometimes think that, when we think about, well, let's just convert our 275 million cars to electric vehicles that will solve the problem. But I think utilities are in a unique position.

Bill Meehan: 
They are a regulated entity. That's kind of an interesting and a little out of the ordinary business model for industries today. So why not take the advantage of their position in the community as a regulated monopoly to kind of think differently, think about things in a kind of new way. For example, I mean, we have a huge amount of public transportation systems within the United States that frankly are just not... Oh, and by the way, not only are they the public transit systems, they're mostly electric, right? I mean subway systems, in some cases, light rail vehicles. Why not kind of combine things? Why not look at things in a bigger picture, as to how we can make these systems safer, more accessible, maybe even more electrification. Years ago, we converted all our electric trolley cars to diesel buses. We've got to go back again and do that again.

Bill Meehan: 
So I think we really have to think more globally about the whole transportation system, not just converting gas cars to electric, but thinking about how the relationship, the intersection of all of these transportation systems come together. I come from Boston, I'm right now up the street from Boston, more or less. And the public transportation system in Boston is now under tremendous pressure to improve their operations.

Bill Meehan: 
That in fact, one of the major lines within the old subway system is closed down for 30 days for needed repairs that haven't happened for years. So why not think about things in a much, a broader way? Why not take other kind of transportation systems like freight rail and say, okay, how can we electrify that? Or how can we decarbonize that? More than just doing a transition from gas cars to electric cars. I mean, frankly, electric cars look exactly like gas cars. Think about them in a different kind of way. That's my view, look at it from a big picture. And I think Pat and I will agree that in both cases that Pat talked about and I'm talking about, that the location plays a huge role in how we do all of these things, so that's kind of my view.

Jason Price: 
Great. Well, you both have nicely described and get us thinking about the foundation to where to go from here. So let's dig in a bit further. And as you know, the energy center community is a utility community. So we're talking about the utility perspective on all this. So what do these divergent possibilities and transportation mean for the power providers? And what type of planning should they be doing now? Bill, you get first track at this one.

Bill Meehan: 
Well, I think the planning is obvious. We've got all of this extra load. We need to locate new transmission lines. In fact, when I think about planning, we do think about charging a lot, charging of electric vehicles, but really it begins at citing of where all this new renewable resources. I mean, we saw a chart from the Department of Energy about. It's going to be like 10 times the amount of renewable resources and amount of storage. So where are we going to put all this stuff? So we really have to think about the whole energy supply side of things. The other thing is on a transmission system, electric transmission. Right now, we're probably going to need, if we're going to do what we say we're going to do by 2050, be virtually decarbonized. We're going to need probably three times the number of transmission lines or three times the number of transmission capacity to be able to move power from where it's being generated in a clean way to where it's going to be utilized for the charging and for all of the changes that are going to occur.

Bill Meehan: 
So we're going to have, maybe take a look at the planning, not necessarily just from the side of where we're going to cite our charging stations or where we're going to cite the substations. Frankly, we're going to need substations, not just plugging. We can't just plug in these high capacity DC charges. They're going to be requiring like a substation. And how are we going to fit all of this together in a much more holistic way?

Bill Meehan: 
The other problem with this in terms of planning is the sort of longer term view of our whole national grid. Right now, our grid is kind of broken up into pieces and parts. And probably we're going to need to think about how it's going to be more efficient if it's done, the planning is done more holistically at a national level, as opposed to a regional level. So that's kind of my view. And I think there are other areas within the planning that we have to think about, if we're going to need all of this additional capability, this capacity for transportation. So where we're going to conserve a whole lot more in other parts of the business to compensate for this additional amount of capacity that we're going to be needing. So I'll turn it over to Pat. What do you think Pat?

Pat Hohl: 
Well, I definitely agree with that Bill. And Matt knows that in preparation for this podcast, we posted a poll on Energy Central to ask people in the utility industry about their views on transportation electrification. And one of the questions that I asked was, what's currently missing? And you know what got a lot of attention there was of course capacity for electricity, but the second one was understanding. And capacity's not just megawatt hours, but it's also distribution impact and power quality. I just recently saw the NERC summer reliability report for this summer and they have over half of the country currently at risk for resource inadequacy, which could potentially result in outages this summer. So capacity is a huge deal. And when we look at capacity and distribution impacts, it leads us to the second most popular answer, which was understanding. And that's understanding of a much more complicated system than utilities are accustomed to.

Pat Hohl: 
We've had centralized generation. We've had predictable growth in the distribution system, and that has led to a way of conducting our business, but that methodology is not going to hold as we have all of these changes with renewable energy, with moving loads due to electrification. And as Bill pointed out, transportation electrification is not just people charging at their homes, but much larger impacts in locations where we are not accustomed to seeing those. So I think the important element here in terms of understanding is to have a good model of the system that can handle the complexities that we're talking about here.

Pat Hohl: 
And if you think about modeling at a utility space, we've done a great job at the distribution level, but we've never really modeled what happens beyond the meter. And we've never really modeled what happens above the circuit breaker at the substation. And we have to take a much more holistic view of the entire system, the way that it works together. I will say just as another thought here, as we see this kind of electrification is going to result in a lot of new work, there's going to be new facilities to be installed, new panel upgrades at people's homes. And I mentioned the desire to be cost effective in the way we conduct our business. We still have to do all of our normal work, building and inspecting and maintaining the network using more modern tools.

Jason Price: 
No doubt. So something that you're alluding to is basically the category of trends and what you're seeing in the marketplace. So if you could both, and we'll start with you Pat, talk us through some of the things that you're seeing now. I mean, let's put it this way. Innovation and technology continues to evolve, so what was standard or accepted last year could be completely different this year. So what are you seeing in terms of trends? What are you watching for? Just share your thoughts on that.

Pat Hohl: 
Sure. Well, to layer on to the things that we've already brought up, I think where these things happen is critically important. Bill mentioned transmission, and I've mentioned distribution, generation, where these things occur, changes the way that they impact our system. So I think we have to keep an eye on adoption, particularly on fleets. The impact from trucks and school buses and public transportation is very, very significant. Tesla is bringing out their Tesla semi, with that comes what they call the mega charger. It's called a mega charger because that's a megawatt demand. So I picture a trucking station. I think Pepsi has committed to buying these trucks. I picture a trucking station with, let's say it's only 10 mega chargers. That's a 10 megawatt demand when all those trucks are charging and where that happens is very, very important. Placement on the system and the charging patterns that we see begin to emerge are going to be critically important.

Pat Hohl: 
Are people going to charge at home? In some places they do. They charge at home a lot. We're going to be installing chargers along transportation corridors. On freeways. Will those be utilized? To what extent will they be utilized? That's going to have a big impact. Will people adopt curbside charging or charging at their shopping centers? I don't know. I think it varies a lot by region and hence the reason to pay attention to region and location and where these things are happening. The other trend that I am watching is vehicle to grid. These vehicles are coming in with some very large batteries, the Ford F-150, they advertise it as being capable of running your home. And so where we see vehicle to grid, electricity is going to be something very, very important to watch, not only from capacity, but from a power quality point of view, too.

Jason Price: 
Bill you want to jump in?

Bill Meehan: 
Yeah, of course I always agree with Pat mostly, but again, I'm going to the theme of a broader view, a little bit, kind of a different way of looking at things. And I've done a lot of talking and writing about the notion of what's called digital transformation. I mean, that's kind of a buzzword out there. And I coined the term digital transition, which is really kind of taking in more incremental approach to things which doesn't always lead to a new way of thinking. So digital transformation has two components, certainly new technology or usually digital technology. And certainly electric vehicles really kind of fall into that category. But also of a completely different change of behavior, really for the better. And I kind of think that we're still not there with electric vehicles. And so, I'm looking very much at the trend for things called induction charging.

Bill Meehan: 
Now this is a whole new way of thinking about even charging vehicles and that would include charging motion. In other words, things like where I'm on a roadway and I literally will be charging or not even charging, but really just running my vehicle. Buses, cars, trucks, you name it in ways that do not require charging at all. In other words, thinking of things kind of out of the box, what if we could create an infrastructure that doesn't actually even require plugging in cars or probably minimizing batteries, because batteries are really a particularly difficult issue. So when we think about, we've got so used to things like, we go to the gas station, we go in, we put our charge card in and we run in and buy a lottery ticket or a cup of coffee. We go out and our car's pretty much full.

Bill Meehan: 
And then we drive 300 miles. Well, that's kind of the way we think. That's our behavior. That's our normal behavior. What if we try to think differently? And I think utilities are in a unique position if this idea of induction charging. And by the way, the technology is there. There's a pilot that is done in Italy using the car manufacturers in Italy. They've got a test track, it's called the arena of the future, where they can just drive around on this test track and it's induction charging. No plugs, no wires. If we could think about those things in a way of changing our behavior, the trend would be perhaps that we could think differently about things. Smaller vehicles, city cars, you'd say, "Oh no Americans, they want SUVs. They want big cars." But maybe much smaller vehicles could come in place. And you'd say, "Well, how do we get them to do that?"

Bill Meehan: 
Well, we need them to be on the market. And we need to convince people that, especially people in the cities that these small little cars, electric cars that are charged on platforms, that are induction charging could be the.... So I think the trend is going to shift from strictly thinking about electric vehicles as they're currently configured, converting gas cars to electric cars, to something a little bit different so that we can think, and we can behave differently. So imagine, wow, it would be terrific to never have to fuel your car, because you just go on the road. And things like IOT and 5G and be able to charge and be able to pay for all of that stuff could be done automatically. We have the technology to do it. And infact, the technology for this charge in motion is really good. So that's kind of my idea is the trend.

Bill Meehan: 
Sure. I think Pat's right. All of the things associated with making those kinds of investments. But utilities actually maybe should be thinking about what's our new business opportunity. Not just how do I just incrementally improve the business, selling more kilowatt hours. But as a utility, they're uniquely positioned unlike any other industry. The history of regulation, regulating private industry goes back to the 1877 in the court case of Munn versus the state of Illinois, where we created this whole utility. Imagining a utility company, getting into the business of running that infrastructure of charge in motion or other infrastructures to be, that are not quite there yet to be able to do this sort of global rethinking of the decarbonization process. So again, I think all of it... It's kind of a, everything. The trend is not just one or the other, but probably some of everything. That's kind of my view.

Jason Price: 
That's great. Great to both of you. And I think that our audience always appreciates that both of you are known for really questioning the conventional thinking and you both have nicely articulated it there. Okay. So let's dig a little bit further and understand a bit in terms of how this is a crossroads to the work that you guys focus on. So to both of you, Bill and Pat, you two no doubt have a lot of history in the space and you understand our Energy Central audience, but I want to ask you both the question is, how should utilities be preparing to respond and manage to the potential impacts of electrifying our transportation? Bill, why don't you take this one first?

Bill Meehan: 
Sure. Well, one of the reasons I got into GIS in the very first place is because it gives us the opportunity to do kind of what I said earlier, to think differently. Because GIS using spatial intelligence, spatial location technology, being able to see patterns in relationships that are not obvious, to see things like we always say, see what others can't see, see the relationships of one another. That's why I think utilities need to dig a little bit differently to think about how to use technology particularly, and for us it's GIS technology, to think about how can I build those relationships? How can we think about maybe locating transmission lines right next to freight lines? Because I mean, we're going to need to figure out what do we do with these locomotives. We can't keep doing those. We can't keep running, all our food and all our resources are coming by freight trains.

Bill Meehan: 
And all our roadways are being kind of eaten up by the proliferation of trucks. We need to think, so why not cite transmission where it needs to be going with freight trains or hydrogen generations. So I think utilities have to maybe speculate, well, what business can we be in? How can we leverage our regulated monopoly history to be able to do things in a different way? So that's what I think that utilities really need to... Not be so reactive as you said, I think earlier in the podcast, utilities kind of move slowly and really minimize the amount of risk. So I think they need to kind of peel away that sort of notion of risk averse and work things in a different way.

Jason Price: 
Yeah for sure. Pat, same question to you.

Pat Hohl: 
So the question is around how utilities should prepare to respond. And as I've listened to Bill talk, I think, maybe if I can provide a suggestion on how to resolve the difference between Bill and I on this issue. I think I tend to come at this more tactically and Bill you're coming at this more strategically. And I think of this, with all of these changes, the question in my mind is over what period of time will these things occur and at what cost and what cost can people tolerate? We've talked about capacity. But the second thing that came up in our survey, bubbled to the surface was understanding. And I think utilities really need to be driving towards greater understanding of all of these issues and how they will fit together, how they will impact customers and how they impact the system. I think that breaks down into three pieces.

Pat Hohl: 
One, you have to be able to model this system in adequate detail and all of the parameters, including some new parameters that we're not used to modeling like social considerations and equity impacts. Once the system is modeled and you have adequate data in hand, then we're going to visualize that information. We're going to analyze it and understand it more effectively and see what those things mean. There are a lot more voices that utilities have to listen to, and there are a lot more pieces of the puzzle that need to fit together. If we look at the infrastructure jobs act, most of that comes down through the states and requires a great deal of collaboration between governmental agencies, utilities and even utilities with their neighbors, neighboring cities that have their own utilities.

Pat Hohl: 
So there are many more voices here and that leads us to greater communication and greater collaboration. And all of these things can be accomplished with a modern GIS. It's really the pillars that we hang on. Esri has invested a tremendous amount of research and development into moving all of these things forward. And I think in as much as location is so critical with this puzzle, that this together can really lead to a great process improvement with the way that we handle transportation electrification and ultimately serve our customers.

Jason Price: 
Nicely stated. And it seems like no matter what the outcome, we have a lot of progress in transportation to look forward to. And no doubt geospatial information may very well be that unsung lifeblood of that transformation. We'll come back in a moment to finalize and discuss closing arguments. But first we like to take a break and pivot over to what we call our lightning round. And as you two know, this is the portion of the podcast where we get to know you, our guests a bit more on a personal level rather than a professional level. So we're going to fire these questions at you and you'll have one word or phrase response. Are you both ready?

Bill Meehan: 
Yep.

Pat Hohl: 
I'm ready.

Jason Price: 
While we talk about the future of transportation, let's take a look back. To each of you, what was your first car? Bill?

Bill Meehan: 
A 1957 Chevy.

Jason Price: 
Pat?

Pat Hohl: 
1962 Rambler.

Jason Price: 
All right. And sticking with Bill next. Keeping in that car, what's your favorite road trip album, artist, or song?

Bill Meehan: 
Doobie Brothers, and it would be, Long Train Runnin'

Jason Price: 
Pat?

Pat Hohl: 
Well, you're just asking these questions because Bill and I are both car guys and music guys. This is a very difficult question, but I'll tell you where I landed. Boston's first album, titled Boston.

Jason Price: 
Very nice. All right, let's stay with you Pat. Speaking of road trips, do you have a favorite underrated road trip destination in the US that you've been to.

Pat Hohl: 
The central coast of California.

Jason Price: 
Bill?

Bill Meehan: 
I just returned from a road trip to Cooperstown, New York, the baseball hall of fame. I'm a big baseball fan.
 

Jason Price: 
Nice. I'll stay with you. What's the best piece of advice you've gotten over the course of your career?

Bill Meehan: 
Best piece of advice is, think differently. Challenge your own internal assumptions often.

Jason Price: 
Pat?

Pat Hohl: 
This is a very difficult question because I received a lot of good advice over the course of my career, but I'm going to say this one, never pass up an opportunity to do something new.

Jason Price: 
Nice. Pat, we'll stay with you. What lessons do you hope to impart on the next generation of GIS and digital technology experts?

Pat Hohl: 
Well, since we're talking about technology, I'm going to say involve the end user very early. They know the most about what it is that they need.

Jason Price: 
Bill?

Bill Meehan: 
Think broadly about what GIS really means and that it isn't about simply making really nice representations of old paper maps. Think about them that this is about transformation, not just making maps.

Jason Price: 
Understood. And thank you for indulging us on this lightning round. And as I said, we want to give you both closing arguments. So each of you has 60 seconds to share your thought, your closing thoughts. Pat, it's your turn to go first and Bill, you can follow.

Pat Hohl: 
Well in closing, I would just like to say that there is a lot of change coming our way in the utility industry. And we're going to have to do things that we have not done historically in the past. And that's going to require a lot more information and a lot better collaboration with not only our customers, but our employees and regulators. And where these things happen is critically important. We have tended to think of GIS as a mapping system, that the folks in operations use to figure out where the polls are. But today it's really much, much more. It's a system to organize the information around where it occurs, to analyze it, and to be able to share that with people in colorful ways on any device at any time.

Bill Meehan: 
How are we going to meet these challenges? If we do this right, our lives, our individual lives will be easier, instead of more complicated and more challenging.

Bill Meehan: 
And I think the idea is, GIS can really help us see those things in and help us on a path. Pat mentioned that we think a lot about is equity. If we think about electric vehicles, equity, a lot of people can't afford these expensive electric vehicles. If we could figure out how to make things better for not just those of us that are privileged, but for the whole community, make things better for everyone, make it safer, make it more convenient, make it more reliable, make things just better. That's my hope.

Jason Price: 
Outstanding. As always it's been a pleasure to have you both on the podcast. And as you can see, the time has really flown by. I look forward to seeing this conversation continue online at the Energy Central community. Until then thanks once again to both of you for your time and for sharing your knowledge and perspectives on Energy Central's audience today on today's episode. Thank you both. You can always reach Bill and Pat through the Energy Central Platform where they welcome your questions and comments. We also want to give a shout out of thanks to the podcast sponsor that made today's episode possible. To Esri, an international supplier of geographic information, GIS software, web GIS, and geo database management applications. 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.

 

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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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