Perspective

"We ask our project managers to first understand why business diversity is important, then to understand that we will need to subcontract our typical engineering services that we provide. Those are two new ways of thinking for our employee-owners."

FERC Order 881 was the subject of discussion at a recent IEEE Power & Energy Society T&D Conference, which was attended by POWER Engineers’ Lisa Deppa. She explains here the latest on Order 881 and why it is important to the decarbonization journey.

"We learned that through immediate and accelerated investments in demand-side solutions, we can offset about a third of the incremental costs of full grid decarbonization, saving approximately $107 billion annually by 2050."

Most critically, regulators should remember that thoughtful, informed purchasing practices by utilities that know their customers and systems best, go a long way toward ensuring energy remains affordable.

Recent advisories confirm that nation-state threat actors are actively seeking to compromise critical infrastructure sectors, especially the electric grid.

“EPRI recently launched the Distribution Forum (DxF), a collective of leading distribution companies, which aim to drive excellence in the safe, reliable, resilient, and cost-effective operation of electric distribution companies.”

“To achieve integration and widespread adoption of BESS requires a collaborative and multi-pronged approach. In addition to technological innovation, there needs to be regulatory support, financial investment, and cultivation of a skilled workforce adept in managing these new systems.”

Forum conversations about the expansion of economic electrification show how important it is to collaborate across industries and regions. As Brouillette remarked, “Energy has never been more important in the diplomatic world.”

“We want to be known as the go-to engineering company. The Minnesota Vikings are the only ones we work for outside of the solar market. We see unique niche engineering specialties within what we do, like SCADA.”

“We were the civil contractor on the rebuild of about 400 manholes in and around St. Louis as they were upgrading the infrastructure. We’ve also been doing other underground distribution work with Ameren Missouri running conduits.”