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Fortnightly Magazine - July 2025

Concrete Poles for Transmission Lines

Burns & McDonnell

“On a steel or wood pole, a specialized coating or a sleeve is put on below grade to protect from corrosion. But with concrete, it comes out of the mold ready to set in a corrosive environment.”
Byline: 

Michaela Nickell and Brent Windsor

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Best Practices for Cased Transmission Foundations

Burns & McDonnell

“We’re looking at the strength of the soil to figure out how deep the foundation needs to go. Not so shallow that it fails in a few years, but not so deep that it’s over-designed and unnecessarily expensive. It’s about finding the right balance between long-term durability and cost.”
Byline: 

Brad Gardner and Paul Barker

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Underground Transmission Considerations

Burns & McDonnell

“I led the onshore portion of the South Fork Wind Project and will provide examples from that project of how regulatory influence can drive design decisions and environmental considerations when you’re in construction.”
Byline: 

Danny Serrano and Vinny Montemurro

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PUF Chats With CEOs

Accenture

Key industry thought leaders from the C-suite gave unique perspectives on building an energy system for resilience, growth, affordability, and more at the sidelines of Accenture’s International Utilities and Energy Conference 2025.
Byline: 

PUF

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PUF Chats: Calvin Butler

Exelon, EEI

“I see my leadership at Exelon and my leadership at EEI as perfect matches in terms of what we’re doing. Because if I lead with my customer, I lead with reliability, resiliency, security, and affordability. Those issues permeate all our organizations.”
Byline: 

Calvin Butler

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PUF Chats: Chris O'Shea

Centrica

“If we build an energy system which nobody can afford, we’ll have failed. If we build an energy system which is clean but not reliable, we’ll have failed. If we continue using unabated fossil fuels, we’ll have failed. The answer is somewhere in the middle of these three, and we’ve got to have a properly informed debate.”
Byline: 

Chris O’Shea

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PUF Chats: Joe Purington

AVANGRID

“We’re fortunate being a global company on the supply chain side. Being part of the Iberdrola family in AVANGRID, it speeds up our wait time to 2 to 3 years. Where we had impacts from COVID in the U.S. on distribution transformers, we were able to take manufacturing slots from Brazil.”
Byline: 

Joe Purington

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What They Heard and Learned at Accenture IUEC

Exelon, Accenture

“We’re seeing annual growth rates of between 13-16% nationally from data center power year-over-year between now and the year 2030. Data centers constituted about 5% of total U.S. demand in 2024, for comparison. That’ll increase to between 16-23% percent by 2033.”
Byline: 

Carim Khouzami, Scott Tinkler, Jim Mazurek

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Accenture IUEC: Scott Tinkler

Accenture

“The most surprising is how many times we heard how much the utilities require regulatory stability to meet their goals. They are looking for predictability. However, it’s essential they make resilience a permanent capability to prepare and turn disruption into opportunity.”
Byline: 

Scott Tinkler

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Accenture IUEC: Jim Mazurek

Accenture

“Utilities are pushing more obligations and responsibilities onto hyperscalers to avoid putting a burden on other customers. For example, we have seen a tech firm develop a transmission line it owns in the northwest U.S.”
Byline: 

Jim Mazurek

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