Idaho Power CEO Lisa Grow said she didn’t really understand the “nuance” between the concepts of “equity” and “equality” until she began “leaning into” the ideas after taking the top job at the Boise-based utility this year.

“I sit here as a 55-year-old, fourth-generation Idahoan from the middle class. I’m a hetero, cis, white engineer. I’m married; I’m a working mother, although my children are now grown,” Grow said Friday during a panel discussion on “Diverse Energy Leadership in the West,” hosted by the Committee for Regional Electric Power Cooperation and Western Interconnection Regional Advisory Body (CREPC-WIRAB).

Grow said there are many things she has had to “learn, relearn and unlearn” during a year that’s been tumultuous on multiple fronts, such as public health, the economy, education, housing, food security, voting rights and “safety and policing.”

“Especially as I stepped into this CEO role, I just see that we collectively have a lot more work to do,” Grow said. “When I think about the essential service that we provide, I think it’s imperative that we take a good hard look at ourselves, as individuals, as companies and as an industry, and really ask ourselves how do we stack up when we talk about diversity, equity and inclusion.”

On the subject of equity, Grow said she has come to realize that “you don’t get equality until you have equity.”

“And when you think about equity, not everyone is starting in the same place. There are groups that have been excluded and virtually oppressed. And so how do we get equity? How can we help those that haven’t had the same access?” Grow said.

Joining Grow in a discussion that ranged from how the electricity sector can honor diversity among workers and ratepayers to tapping the diversity of resources across the Western Interconnection were John Hairston, acting administrator at the Bonneville Power Administration; Janea Scott, vice chair of the California Energy Commission; and Dionne Thompson, assistant administrator for corporate liaison at the Western Area Power Administration.

Following is more of what we heard during the discussion.

Cultivating Diversity

“I was born in New Orleans but raised in Oregon, and I consider myself an Oregonian, but [the state is] a pretty homogenous environment,” Hairston said, relating his perspective as a Black Portlander. “I had an opportunity to go to school in a more diverse environment in the South, and that really opened my eyes to different cultures’ approaches and how people even looked at me being from Oregon and the way I spoke. It was kind of interesting how folks made judgments or assumed things about me.”

Hairston said BPA has embarked on an “aggressive” program of cultural transformation. “Part of that change was my ascent into the front office, which I think allowed … for folks to kind of see someone different in the front office and see themselves and maybe aspects of their culture reflected in the leadership,” he said.

He cautioned that organizations won’t see much change around diversity without opening up hiring opportunities that create diversity. “What I find is that folks tend to talk diversity, but they really don’t believe or understand the benefits of having diverse teams.”

“I think the Energy Commission is also thinking very much about diversity and how to bring that to our staff, so that the people that work at the Energy Commission look like the people of the state of California — look like the people across our nation,” Scott said. “A lot of that has to do with how we recruit and where we recruit and when we recruit.”

The commission is also engaging in an “outward-facing” take on diversity in how it implements its policies with respect to communities that have been “historically overburdened by pollution and industry,” Scott said. “When we’re looking to make this transition to a 100% clean energy standard, how can we put those communities at the forefront of that transition?”

Thompson said WAPA’s leadership is “extremely dedicated to the idea of diversity,” with a strong focus on recruiting and retaining diverse talent. She also pointed to the diversity of WAPA’s base of preference customers, which includes Native American tribes. “We have programs in place to try make sure that connection is made and we serve that customer base equally,” she said.

RA Challenge

“We’ve looked at recent studies that said, in the Pacific Northwest as a whole, we’re going to be nearing periods of time during the year where regional supplies may not be adequate to meet demand,” Hairston said. “For us, looking at this as a collective approach to solving these problems is important.”

For that reason, BPA joined the Northwest Power Pool’s effort to create a formal resource adequacy program for a large swathe of the West, which Hairston called a “really great opportunity” to collaborate with other regional utilities. (See NWPP RA Effort Quickly Ramping Up.)

“This initiative is voluntary, but it will be enforceable, and this program will ensure how we’re able to maintain a balance of supply and demand during these very high periods of uncertainty,” Hairston said.

Grow expressed concern about the changing “paradigm” in the industry, in which many utilities’ integrated resource plans are “saying ‘we’re going to go to the market’” to fulfill RA requirements without fully grasping what resources will be available.

“The Northwest has all the hydro. … On the east side with Wyoming and Montana, there’s a lot of wind, and in the Desert Southwest, a lot of solar,” Grow said.

“When we look at it much more broadly, I think you can do it in a much more reliable, efficient [way] and optimize the system we have, and transmission is the thing that facilitates that, so we can take advantage of the diversity across the entire Western Interconnection. Idaho Power sits in the middle of that, really, and that’s why we’re very bullish on transmission,” she said.

“As you can imagine, [resource adequacy] is something that’s very forefront of mind in California,” Scott said. Given the tight RA margins, she said the industry needs “the most accurate and up-to-date information about what’s going on in the system at any given time,” including resource retirements.

“I think we need to adjust our planning, which is probably not a surprise to any folks,” she said. “There are situations that we were not anticipating, like in August, [when] the entire West was really, really hot, versus just one part being hot,” which allows grid operators to “move resources around” to meet demand in certain load pockets.

“In reference to the situation this summer with power costs and the heat in the West, WAPA was able to provide about 5,400 MW of hydro to help out in that situation from our [Colorado River Storage Project] facilities … and even from our Desert Southwest region,” Thompson said.

Thompson added that, after the mid-August heat wave, WAPA realized that it has facilities along the border of the Eastern and Western interconnections that could have been positioned to assist the West during the heat wave.

“Had they been up and running and able to send power back and forth across the interties, there was a significant amount of surplus available in the Eastern Interconnection that could’ve been sent over and used to help ameliorate the situation,” she said.

Push-pull

“I think a lot about the siloes that our energy systems are in,” Scott said, pointing to the separation between the electric, natural gas and transportation systems. “But as we work towards the 100% clean energy standard, I think we will see the systems come together in a way that we need to be looking around corners and trying to look a few steps ahead.”

Scott pointed to the paradox of striving to reduce the energy use of buildings while simultaneously seeking to electrify transportation.

“That means I’m going to plug a whole bunch of things into that building,” she said. “So, you’ve got this kind of push-pull, and you want to make sure you don’t have a policy set up in a way that you can’t get both of those things done as we’re moving forward.”

‘Freakishly’ Flawless

Thompson said development of an organized market in the West has been “a long saga of stops and starts and successes and failures over the years.”

“There’s not a real RTO in the West, and utilities over the years have preferred to maintain control over their own transmission and planning, but that’s changing,” Thompson said.

She noted that WAPA operations in the Eastern Interconnection joined SPP in 2015. Some of WAPA’s Western operations last year decided to join SPP’s Western Energy Imbalance Service, while its Sierra Nevada region will link up with CAISO’s Western Energy Imbalance Market (EIM) next March.

Thompson also noted WAPA’s announcement last week expressing interest in joining SPP’s westward expansion. (See related story, Western Utilities Eye RTO Membership in SPP.)

Hairston said BPA has “started on this march toward joining the EIM,” which would occur in March 2022 contingent on final approval by the agency.

“Markets are fundamentally important … being able to leverage the diversity of the various resources both regionally and extra-regionally” and offset risks, Hairston said. “It also gives us an opportunity to utilize the hydro system and share some of the value … in integrating renewable resources.”

But Hairston said the full regionalization of CAISO continues to be hampered by the “governance issue” around who would oversee the market.

“That’s a real issue,” Grow agreed. “It’s hard in the West for people to completely give up control.”

But Grow thinks the expansion of the EIM has shown progress.

“I think CAISO has been really smart in how they’ve developed” the EIM, she said, adding that expansion has gone “freakishly flawlessly.”

“We need to have these markets develop.”