HENDERSON, Nev. — Gary Nolan, NERC compliance manager at Arizona Public Service, is more than a little uneasy about the future of the electric industry’s workforce.

Speaking Tuesday at WECC’s first in-person stakeholder meeting since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Nolan raised what’s become a running concern for the utility industry: the inability to attract younger employees who want to stay in a position for the long haul.

“I know when I was hiring dispatchers 15 years ago, I was having to hire new ones every six to nine months,” Nolan said. “I kept thinking, ‘I don’t know how sustainable this could possibly be.’ In the 15 years since then, I would say I’m sure — as WECC has noticed — that has only gotten worse, right?”

Nolan could only think of a couple operators in APS’ control center who have more than two years on the job. He said it takes at least that long for an employee to become an effective operator of a high-voltage transmission network.

“And knowing this … next generation does not seem like they want to have one career for 30 years, unless something fundamentally changes here in the near future, I really think that we’re going to have to rethink how these jobs are performed or how we’re training for these jobs, because you cannot rely on an algorithm now to have those five to 10 years of [human] experience and know how to survive significant [grid] events,” he said.

“So that’s something that certainly scares the pants off me.”

Nolan’s comments came during an “interactive strategy forum,” part of the series of meetings at WECC’s annual member conference. WECC convened the forum to elicit members’ visions for the electric sector over the next decade to help the organization shape its long-term strategy.

“It’s important that WECC’s work be informed and shaped by our stakeholders. … What should we be prepared for in 2032? [Because] that 10 years will go by very fast,” said Kristine Raper, WECC vice president of external affairs.

New ‘Patterns of Living’

Maury Galbraith, executive director of the Western Interstate Energy Board, pondered the workforce issue from a different angle — but one that could still affect the electricity sector in a big way.

“Is work going to look the same in 10 years than it does today? I mean, are we going to really be having five-day workweeks? Eight-hour workdays? I cannot imagine that is going to be the future in 10 years. I think people will be setting their own schedules, working at their own pace on their own time,” Galbraith said.

He pondered how that could affect the “pattern of living” and the shape of electrical load over the course of a week.

“Are we really going to continue to have a problem with meeting load the length of 6:30 to 10 p.m. time frame? Or is all the load in that time frame going to go elsewhere? I just don’t think the problems of today are necessarily the problems of 10 years from now,” he said.

“I would imagine that there’s going to be big, big changes in how people work? I’m hoping we get four-day workweeks. That’d be great,” Galbraith said, eliciting applause from some in the room.

“I don’t know about you, Maury, but I’ve already been out of the 9-to-5, five-day-a-week world for quite a long time now,” said Fred Heutte, senior policy associate with the Northwest Energy Coalition. “Who could have imagined what a little organism called the coronavirus could do to our working patterns?

“I don’t think that we’re going to go back to the way things were. I agree that these patterns are significantly shifting, have already shifted [and] could shift more,” Heutte said.

Making Life Easier

For Utah Public Service Commission Chair Thad LeVar, a need for new infrastructure is the most pressing issue facing the Western Interconnection. He said the industry must figure out how to build more transmission in a way that prevents electricity from becoming a “luxury.”

“I don’t have the answers to that, but I think that’s what we have to deal with,” LeVar said.

Galbraith expressed optimism that the electric sector is poised to improve lives on a scale similar to the drive for rural electrification in the U.S. a century ago.

“I’m not a believer in technology for technology’s sake, but I am really excited about the electric industry,” Galbraith said, recounting that his own father grew up in Southern Illinois in a house with a dirt floor and no running water.

“He loved rural electrification,” he said. “There was nothing you could tell that man for my entire life that was bad about the electric system. You could point to a dam and say it killed all these fish, and it cut off a great kayaking river, and he didn’t care. It provided rural electrification; it made life easy for a whole generation of people. And there was no way you could diminish the electric industry in that man’s eyes.

“What are we going to do that’s similar to that in 10 years — and in 20 years?”

Galbraith thinks the answer lies in transportation electrification.

“I actually look forward to the day when I don’t have to go to a filling station. Maybe some of you are already doing that today,” he said, adding that he envisions a time when gas stations don’t dot every corner in his Colorado town. “I think we’ve got to focus on how we are going to make people’s lives a little bit easier.

“I see people getting excited about the electric industry in the next 10 years, and maybe a whole new generation of people saying, ‘Wow, look at what the electric industry achieved,’” Galbraith said.

LeVar said the industry faces the challenge of turning transportation electrification from a “strain on the grid to an opportunity.” He thinks policymakers lost an opportunity when they failed to make electric vehicle tax incentives contingent on manufacturers designing EVs to be available “two-way” to the grid.

“If something doesn’t move in that direction, electrification of transportation will be a strain where it really has the opportunity to be one of the solutions,” LeVar said.

Climate Insights

Heutte managed to find a bright spot in the most recent strain on the Western grid. As California was plunged into a series of energy emergencies stemming from an extreme and extended heat wave, Heutte noted, UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain tweeted about a “striking” satellite image showing Hurricane Kay approaching California from the south along with an “enormous” pyrocumulonimbus cloud emanating from a wildfire in the northern part of the state.

“I’m struck by just how amazing it is that we can casually pull up this kind of real-time earth-orbiting satellite data on demand — it really is quite something,” Heutte said. “And the way I’m thinking about this is how we can incorporate this really vast meteorological and climate data into not just operations … but also longer-term planning.”

Riffing off Heutte’s comments, Dana Cabbell, director of integrated system strategy at Southern California Edison, said the industry will need to determine how to adapt the grid to myriad climate risks.

“As we’re seeing, there’s great climate hazard science going on,” Cabbell said. “We understand what we’re seeing in the year 2030, 2050, 2070, and how that can impact the grid overall. I think that really needs to start playing into our planning of the grid.”

Raper, a former Idaho utility regulator, asked Cabbell whether Western utilities should start incorporating those climate insights into the integrated resource plans they submit to utility commissions.

Cabbell said climate data should be included in transmission planning rather than in IRPs, but she acknowledged “it does make sense to look at it from a resource perspective too, because if we’re having more droughts, you’re not going to have the hydro[power],” leaving the question of what other resources will be available.

Raper rounded out the discussion with WECC’s objectives from the interactive exercise.

“I think if anything is clear, it’s [that] the future is pretty unclear,” she said. “We want to recognize that what the future might look like is constantly changing, which means that WECC needs to be able to adapt to that as well. We want to be able to react to the changes in order to protect the reliability and security of the interconnection. Your feedback is critical to our ability to perform insightful and impactful work.”