The Energy Bar Association’s Canadian Chapter held its first annual meeting online Thursday, with discussions on cybersecurity and holding virtual adjudication hearings amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The chapter, formed a year ago, was originally going to hold the meeting in D.C. in April, at the same time as the EBA Annual Meeting, but it was forced to reschedule it in an online format because of the pandemic. (See EBA Holds Annual Meeting Online Successfully.)

Here’s some of what we heard.

Challenges of Cybersecurity on the Distribution Side

David Morton, chair of the British Columbia Utilities Commission, opened the conference with an anecdote about visiting the U.S. Department of Energy for a briefing on cybersecurity earlier this year (before the pandemic hit).

There were two briefings that day: one for those with top secret security clearance and those without. Morton attended the latter, “but I’m not sure it would have made any difference,” he said.

“I couldn’t even tell anybody about it anyway. … I had to sign and swear I wouldn’t share [the information he received] with anybody when I brought it back to my commission,” Morton said. “So, what am I supposed to do with that information? How can I even apply it to any of the work that I do?”

Morton also pointed out that NERC’s mandatory reliability standards only cover the generation and transmission side of the electric industry, leaving the distribution side vulnerable. “If you took out the distribution system in Greater Vancouver, that’s just as bad as taking out the transmission system, at least to the 2.5 million residents in Vancouver,” he said.

“I do think it would be appropriate to raise the bar somewhat on standards,” said Alex Foord, chief information officer for Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator. “The larger entities … are going to come along and do the right thing. The challenge is when you get into smaller [utilities] … they don’t have the expertise, the sophistication and the time to do it. But candidly, that’s no excuse for the lack of action; they owe it to their consumers to do better.”

Cintron Shares Experiences with Virtual Hearings

FERC Chief Administrative Law Judge Carmen Cintron gave attendees a candid behind-the-scenes look into how she transitioned the commission’s Office of Administrative Law Judges from in-person to virtual hearings after the pandemic hit.

The pandemic “caught me, to use an American expression, with my pants down. We had modeled for the whole United States being under a nuclear attack; we had modeled for hurricanes; we had modeled for everything, except a pandemic,” she said.

The office was immediately able to transition to virtual settlement conferences, which aren’t as complicated as hearings, Cintron said. Its settlement success rate has actually risen to 92%, from its usual 89%. “We attribute this to the fact that the business entities, the decision-makers, can actually participate without having to travel” to D.C.

Meanwhile, Cintron postponed imminent hearings until the office’s IT department set up Cisco’s Webex platform and the ALJs trained in using it and practiced by simulating hearings. The first virtual hearing began May 6 and lasted 16 days. One of the parties filed a motion to halt the proceeding, arguing that its virtual nature was a violation of due process, but it was denied by Cintron.

Though she said the process has been an overall success — with even the party that filed the due process motion responding favorably after their hearing was over — Cintron said it has not been without challenges, mostly owing to technical problems. It was immediately clear from her opening remarks that she is not a fan of Webex, and later in the discussion, she said she wants to migrate to Microsoft Teams. The different parties’ varying degrees of computer proficiency and internet bandwidth were early frustrations. ALJs also needed to obtain up to three separate computer monitors in order to conduct hearings in their homes.

Cintron said she anticipates the online-only format to continue into next year. Even once the crisis ends, she expects hearings to be a mixture of in-person and virtual.