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Alltricity Network Report

From the Desk of RMEL Executive Director Rick Putnicki

RMEL Fall Leadership & Management Convention - FINDING SOLUTIONS TO TOMORROW’S CHALLENGES

The RMEL Fall Leadership & Management Convention - "FINDING SOLUTIONS TO TOMORROW’S CHALLENGES" is just one week away! Download the brochure for full details. This is your opportunity to turn off the day-to-day noise and uncertainty, pool your RMEL resources and discover solutions together as an industry. It is the commitment and perseverance of our industry that have always been the secret to finding solutions in times of uncertainty. The open dialogue and the collaboration of our membership instills confidence throughout our electric energy community. Join us and share your success stories, best practices and lessons learned at RMEL’s Fall Convention.

One Week Until the Virtual Fall Convention - Register for Individual Registration or a Company Package!

One of the advantages of a virtual format is it allows our membership to take advantage of a great opportunity to share the quality and relevant content deep into our member organizations. The RMEL Corporate Registration Package is an economical way to allow ALL employees to sign up for any, or all, of the Fall Virtual sessions. Check to see if your company has already signed up for a Corporate Registration Package – your registration cost may already be covered! We’ve had 16 companies sign up so far. If you don’t see your company on that list, there is still time to take advantage of the Corporate Registration Package for our member companies. Individual registrations are also available at $395 to allow members to take advantage of our quality programing. Tuesday and Thursday provide our educational programing, while Wednesday will feature a Disaster Response Roundtable Discussion and the Technology Showcases. Join us! Here is a quick look at our program:

Fall Convention Keynote: Seeing Around the Corner – A View of What’s to Come
John Ellis, Technology and Futurist Keynote Speaker, Best-Selling Author, Software Expert, and Former Global Technologist with Ford Motor Company

John Ellis is a top technology and futurist keynote speaker, best-selling author, and expert in new and emerging transportation technology. His work in the field inspired the book The Zero Dollar Car: How the Revolution in Big Data will Change Your Life, a #1 Amazon Best Seller (Auto Industry Book). For the past 25 years, he has been the managing director of the industry consulting firm JTE Consulting. 

John speaks around the world about how data—from cars and all kinds of devices—will transform industries, business models, and our lives. As a former executive at Motorola and Global Technologist at Ford Motor Company, he led or participated in teams that built many of the innovations we see today in connected vehicles on the ground and in the air. Since then he has helped businesses and organizations understand how technology is affecting the way they operate now and into the future.
Sponsored by Black & Veatch

CEO Panel
Panelist: Aram Benyamin, CEO, Colorado Springs Utilities 
Panelist: Gary Hoogeveen, President and CEO, Rocky Mountain Power
Panelist: Tracey LeBeau, Administrator and CEO, Western Area Power Administration
Panelist: Barbara Sugg, President & CEO, Southwest Power Pool
Moderator: Neal Walker, President, Texas New Mexico Power & RMEL 2022 President 
Sponsored by POWER Engineers, Inc. 

Data Mining – From the Utility and Developer Perspectives
Dave Perrill, CEO, Compute North
Nicole Sedlacek, CEcD, Economic Development Manager, Nebraska Public Power District

What the Heck is Going On: A Guide to the Climate Debate in Washington
Phil Musser, VP Federal Government Affairs, NextEra Energy, Inc.

Cost-Effective Resiliency-As-A-Service: A Critical Facility Microgrid Case Study at Salt River Project
Dan Sowder, Co-Founder and Principal, Sound Grid Partners
Tess Williams, Co-Founder and Principal, Sound Grid Partners 

Tapping into Your Untapped Resource: Unconscious Bias
Dr. Regina Lewis, ReginaSpeaking, LLC 

Grid Security: Key Questions and Answers with PacifiCorp
Daniel Marvin, Director, Cyber Security, Berkshire Hathaway Energy 

Renewable Policy and the Implication to Energy Markets
Eva Liu, Manager, Market Analysis, NextEra Energy Resources 

Anirban Basu and the Chamber of Data (Economic Update)
Anirban Basu, Chairman & CEO, Sage Policy Group, Inc. 

Powering Decarbonization: Strategies for Net-Zero CO2 Emissions
Geoffrey J. Blanford, Ph.D., Senior Technical Executive, EPRI 

Disaster Recovery – it is not “if”, it is “when” Roundtable Discussion
John Bowerfind, COO, Poudre Valley Rural Electric Association
Ruth Marks, VP of Transmission Maintenance, Tri-State Generation & Transmission Association
Art Wiese, VP Energy Delivery, Nebraska Public Power District
Moderator: Ken Wilmot, Sr. VP and Chief Operations Officer, Associated Electric Cooperative, Inc. 

Complimentary Technology Showcases and Other Sponsorship Opportunities are Available

Don’t miss the opportunity to promote your organization through Sponsorship opportunities throughout the event. Complimentary Technology Showcases are available and come with a dedicated landing page on the platform for your company. Please contact us at info@rmel.org if you are interested in a Fall Convention sponsorship.

*Topics and presenters are subject to change.

RMEL to Honors 2021 Award Recipients During the 118th Fall Convention

RMEL is honoring six individuals with RMEL’s top awards on Tuesday, October 19th during RMEL’s 118th Fall Convention. Please click their names to read more about each of these inspiring leaders in the industry. Thomas J. Kent, President & Chief Executive Officer, Nebraska Public Power District (NPPD), will receive RMEL’s highest honor, the 2021 Distinguished Leadership Award. This award recognizes an individual that has demonstrated significant contributions to the electric energy industry, their respective organization, and an advocate for the RMEL Mission.

Doug Bennion, Retired, PacifiCorp, will receive RMEL’s Honorary Life Membership Award. Honorary Life Membership is conferred upon an individual “whose knowledge and accomplishments in the electric energy field entitle him/her to special recognition.” This award recognizes their years of service and dedication.

Four individuals will receive the Industry Leadership Award. The Industry Leadership Award recognizes individuals whose leadership has made an impact within their organizations. The 2021 recipients are: Keith Carman, Vice President of Transmission Operations, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association; Nicholas Peters, Manager, Operating Engineering Group, Colorado Springs Utilities; Angela Piner, Vice President, HDR, Inc.; and John Quintana, Supervisory Electrical Engineer, Western Area Power Administration.

RMEL Foundation Scholarship Fundraising
Help Grow the Industry by Participating in the Silent Auction or Making a Cash Donation

It wouldn’t be an RMEL Fall Convention without an Auction! This year is no different! The virtual RMEL Foundation Auction will open this week, and we encourage you to bid high and bid often! Please SHARE the Auction list of items with colleagues. Everyone is invited to participate whether they are a RMEL member or not! The Auction raises scholarship dollars for students pursuing electric energy careers. Over the past 21 years the Foundation has awarded 461 scholarships totaling more than $1 million. If you have an item you’d like to donate, contact us.

Upcoming Educational Hybrid, In-Person and Virtual Programs

We recognize the desire of our membership to “get back together”! RMEL couldn’t agree more! We are proceeding cautiously, as safety is paramount. We tested the water with our first hybrid event on September 30th at Tri-State Generation & Transmission Association with a Generation Workshop and Roundtable. Thank you to Tri-State for allowing RMEL members to experience your state-of-the-art facility. We received high marks from both virtual and in-person attendees. Please contact us if you’d like us to bring an event to your region. We will continue to provide complimentary webinars, roundtables and low cost workshops to our members.

Hybrid RMEL Safety Roundtable
LIMITED TO 35 IN-PERSON ATTENDEES AT THIS TIME – SIGN UP TODAY
October 28, 2021, 10:00 a.m. - 2 p.m. MDT, Tri-State Generation & Transmission Association, Westminster, CO

Chris Ukowich, Region Safety Officer for the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT), will share his extensive knowledge of traffic control and commercial vehicle operations and licenses to lead a discussion of situational and traffic awareness best practices. He will speak to move-over laws for utility workers, load securement, inspection issues, helpful checklists and the amount of time electronic inspection should take, electronic inspection logs. From there, he will go into more of an in depth discussion on specific items including CDL, pre/post-trip inspections and traffic control.

We Hope to See You at the Fall Convention and upcoming RMEL Events!

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Education and Upcoming Events

RMEL's 2021 Virtual Fall Convention – October 19-21, 2021
Hybrid Safety Roundtable – October 28, 2021, Westminster, CO

   
Burns & McDonnell
   
Alltricity Network Member Information
RMEL's trusted network is now accessible on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. These are forums intended for RMEL members only. Working side-by-side in a cooperative manner, RMEL members band together for the common goal of bettering the industry and improving service for utility customers. For more than 100 years, these key principles have proven successful, and more importantly, are tried and true methods for building strong business relationships.
 
RMEL Champions is a prestigious group of RMEL supporters with access to useful and beneficial promotional opportunities. Thank you 2021 RMEL Champions!
Industry Information
  
Eastern Interconnection grid operators and planners including Southern Co., Duke Energy and the PJM Interconnection called for more transmission and coordination to help meet renewable energy goals in a white paper released Tuesday.
Global energy storage deployments will nearly triple in 2021 compared to last year, reaching 12 GW/28 GWh this year, according to a new report from Wood Mackenzie.
 
  
The Lower Colorado River Authority has completed a more than 12-year project to upgrade the floodgates at Buchanan Dam to maintain continued reliable and safe operations at the dam.
The demand for electric vehicles has never been higher. Government leaders see the elimination of internal combustion vehicles as a crucial step to reduce global emissions and slow the effects of climate change.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced $45 million in funding for 12 projects to advance point-source carbon capture and storage technologies that can capture at least 95% of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions generated from natural gas power and industrial facilities that produce commodities like cement and steel. 
  
After more than three years of rigorous review and analysis, the Bonneville Power Administration has decided to join the Western Energy Imbalance Market in March 2022. 
This week on the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast, guest Kevin Hernandez, Partner of Grid Edge Community of Practice at ScottMadden, shared what he's seeing as trends in the electric vehicle space as the utility stakeholders continue to brace for the massive changes that will be necessary. 
The market data provided here are republished, with permission, from data collected by the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) and are updated biweekly.
 
  
A new trial in Australia is tackling the regulatory aspect of DER marketplaces hoping to answer the question: How does a utility earn a return on customer-sited assets?
Some say the power generation mix of the future will be nearly all renewable energies and battery storage, exclusive above all other resources. Fossil fuels like coal and natural gas are living on borrowed time, they say.
Freshly emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Chesapeake Energy today announced a deal to acquire publicly traded Vine Energy for $2.2 billion, or $15 per share.
European electricity producers are snapping up coal cargoes as a shortage of natural gas forces utilities to burn the dirtiest of fossil fuels.
 
Member Announcements
Austin Energy is seeing unprecedented demand among its customers for whole house generators and solar panels with batteries designed to act as backup power sources during electrical outages. 
APS CEO Jeff Guldner recently participated in an insightful 1-on-1 podcast. During the 23-minute Q&A with iHeartMedia’s William Harfosh, Guldner discussed our Clean Energy Commitment, electric vehicles, climate change, our reliability compared to the recent situation in Texas, and economic development in Arizona.
Basin Electric announced today the cooperative is partnering with ALLETE of Duluth, Minn., and Dairyland Power Cooperative of La Crosse, Wisconsin, to develop new natural gas-based generation.
 
Representatives of Nebraska Public Power District, The City of York and Solar Developer GRNE will hold an official groundbreaking event for the York Community Solar project located at 1214 Road 15 (York landfill), north of York.
  
The Omaha Public Power District Board of Directors promoted Troy Via to the newly created position of Chief Operating Officer and Vice President -- Utility Operations, effective Oct. 31. 
Several electric providers that serve millions of customers in the Western United States announced plans today to evaluate regional market solutions together. 
On the heels of announcing signed agreements for three new solar power plants in Arizona, SRP announced its largest standalone solar power plant to soon be under development northwest of Flagstaff, Arizona. 
Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association would continue to meet its carbon dioxide reduction and clean energy goals as identified in its Responsible Energy Plan and supported in a supplemental Electric Resource Plan (ERP) filing made today with the Colorado Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).
  
Recently, two solar salesmen came to my home in Brighton offering to convince me of the value of adding solar. Their main sales pitch was a false narrative that United Power rates were slated to increase “dramatically” over the next several years due to our ongoing conversations with our power supplier, Tri-State G&T, about a contract modification. 
  
At Tucson Electric Power, we believe our differences make us stronger. Diversity, equity and inclusion are a core part of our company culture. Here are some of the key ways we champion an inclusive, diverse environment and work to make meaningful progress both inside our company and throughout our community.
As WAPA's Human Performance Improvement/Just Culture Program gains traction, Human Performance Program Manager Krystall Valencia is interested in better educating employees on how the program benefits them.
Xcel Energy has started work on an $8.4 million electric substation on Northeast 24th Avenue near Whitaker Road that will open more opportunities for business growth and job creation in northeast Amarillo.
White Paper
Researchers have identified a key mechanism responsible for the lower efficiencies of organic solar cells and shown a way that this hurdle might be overcome.