Two of Texas’ largest power companies say they are in no hurry to return employees to their offices, an indication of the electric industry’s caution around the coronavirus pandemic and its importance to the economy and everyday life.

Vistra Energy CEO Curt Morgan and Oncor CEO Allen Nye both said during a recent Gulf Coast Power Association video panel discussion that they are taking great care in returning their staff to the workplace.

“We’ll probably be one of the last to go back to the workplace. We have no intention of bringing anyone back until we’re certain we can do so in a healthy manner,” Nye said during the June 4 discussion. “We recognize the critical nature of the service we provide. It’s been made abundantly clear to me that we have to keep the lights on. We have productivity in the company and the lights are on.”

“How, as the CEO of a company, can you bring people back if you can get the same productivity from people at home but you’re adding incremental risk to your people?” Morgan said. “It’s a very simply equation for us. Our people don’t want to do it. They’re afraid. Some have kids and don’t want to bring anything home. We’re not coming back until we have a vaccine or a therapeutic that works.”

It’s not just electric utilities taking a go-slow approach. MISO has gone so far as to call off all in-person meetings until next year. (See Wary of Contagion, MISO Bars Visitors for 2020.) CAISO has shut down in-person meetings until mid-September. PJM’s companywide telecommuting posture is likely to extend well into the fall.

SPP said last week it has postponed by two months its plan for returning staff to its facilities in Little Rock, Ark. — until Sept. 8, at the earliest. The RTO had originally planned a July 6 phased return, but the state has experienced a rise of confirmed cases, with hospitalizations up 88% and active cases nearly doubling since Memorial Day.

In an email to stakeholders, CEO Barbara Sugg said SPP “will always put [employees’] health and safety first” when deciding to return them to the office. The grid operator has hired an epidemiologist to tour its corporate headquarters and review the controls it has put in place.

“We are also examining internal policies and resources to support a longer-term transition” that also allows for continued telecommuting, Sugg said.

The RTOs and utilities have discovered that the office environment is actually conducive in spreading the coronavirus. Elevators, coffee machines and office kitchens, once taken for granted, now present dangers in a COVID-19 world.

“I’ve found from other [companies] sending people back that the restroom is the issue,” Morgan said, pointing to social-distancing requirements that would force employees to wait in lines. “It’s going to be really difficult to be productive when you have to stand in line to go to the bathroom.”

Vistra has organized a “planning-ahead” team to determine how best to bring back about 1,000 employees to its large open office space. Morgan said the team is working on more than 100 tasks to ready the office. The company also has an in-house doctor and is trying to get access to testing.

“I’m anxious to get back. Employees are asking us when we’ll return,” Morgan said. “Safety is bigger than anything else. Health is bigger than anything else.”

Cultural Shift

Vistra shut down its offices very early, Morgan said. He said the company has a “number of folks” from China, including some from Wuhan, where the coronavirus originated. As early as mid-February, Morgan said, Vistra started getting reports “that there was something terribly wrong in China.”

The company’s early focus was on Luminant, its competitive generation business. The company began testing employees, primarily at power plants, and discovered “a number” of people with high temperatures. “That made people think, ‘This is really serious,’” Morgan said.

Concerned employees were allowed to stay home without taking paid time off. That created a cultural shift for power plant staff and others, Morgan said.

“Power plant employees want to go to work. They want to be at the plant,” he said.

Luminant added portable washing stations at its plants and tried to socially distance as much as possible. Contractors helping with spring maintenance outages stayed in local hotels and were required to undergo temperature checks before entering the plants’ front gates.

“Those types of things were important to also get contractors to have that same mindset [as staff],” Morgan said. “We got a little pushback, but we told them they would not step on site if they didn’t do the things the way we did.”

Through it all, a staff of 3,000 or so Luminant employees and contractors completed 86 outages without a single plant-related infection.

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” Morgan said. He did note a couple of employees tested positive for COVID-19, “but that was because of contact tracing.”

Closer Through Distancing

Oncor took similar early action, dusting off its 13-year-old pandemic plan and implementing it in early January. By March 16, the company reached the highest of four levels and sent everyone home.

Everyone, that is, except the 1,200 or so service staff, line workers and other field employees. Each employee was assigned a vehicle that could be taken home at night and sanitized. Because it moved early, Oncor was able to lease enough additional vehicles and secure personal protection equipment for those in the field.

The company has adapted its processes to the new normal. Safety meetings are now conducted virtually. Employees are no longer shared with other teams, and they have to make appointments at their shops to pick up tools. Backup facilities are used so that as one group finishes its 12-hour shifts, that facility is cleaned during the next 12 hours while employees work out of the primary facility. Catered food is brought to the field, where employees can eat in their trucks.

Nye said only two employees have tested positive for COVID-19 and both have recovered. “That indicates the plan is working very well.

“I had my doubts when we started this,” said Nye, who participated in the panel after an earlier video call with 800 employees. “It’s an entirely different world. We’ve never gone this remote, this virtual, but I’m very pleased with how the technology has held up. We’re all working longer and harder, but overall, I’ve been very encouraged and very relieved that it’s worked out as well as it has.”

Like Nye, Morgan said communications with a virtual staff had held up well. Vistra is attracting as many as 3,000 employees to its weekly live streams, and executives are answering as many as 400 comments after each event. A recent request for pictures of staff’s home offices and their helpers drew hundreds of photos.

“It’s interesting how many people have pets,” Morgan said. “I think our company today is closer than we were prior to this. I like being in the same room with people, but we try to do the best we can with what we have.”