The Health Pulse

[MARIMBA] [MUSIC PLAYING]

SAL GILL: Hello and welcome to a new episode of Electrifying AI. Our mission is to provide a venue for clean energy enthusiasts to gain up to date insights on the latest developments taking shape in the electricity sector. Along the way, we'll help demystify the connection between the greatest machine ever built, the electric grid, and the greatest enabler of our time, data analytics. To help us do that we'll have a series of special guests this season who hold a variety of different roles throughout the electricity industry.

For today's episode, we're excited to welcome someone with a long track record of leadership, collaboration, and influence within the energy industry. Julia Hamm has served as the president and CEO of SEPA, the Smart Electric Power Alliance, since 2004. While the organization's name might have changed in recent years, its mission to facilitate the electric power industry smart transition to a clean and modern energy future through education, research, standards, and collaboration has remained its core focus. SEPA wants to see a carbon-free energy system by 2050. So how's it going, and what will it take to get there? We'll ask Julia that today.

But first, Julia, welcome and we'd love to first know about your room. It looks awesome.

JULIA HAMM: [LAUGHTER] Thank you. Well, thank you so much for having me on. I'm looking forward to the conversation. Yes, I have worked very hard on the room. I, early on in the pandemic, quickly became obsessed with Room Rater on Twitter and so spent the first few weeks of working from home during the pandemic getting my space cleaned up and ready. And I finally felt like I was ready and I submitted myself, an image of myself, to Room Rater and I was so excited to get a 9 out of 10. But then I, of course, became obsessed with like I need to get a 10 out of 10. So then I spent multiple weeks after that adding the plants and the light and the SEPA logo behind me and changing what was on my bookshelves. And finally felt like I was ready after probably two months. It probably took me another two months to get ready to finally resubmit and I did it. I got the perfect 10 out of 10. I've got my little--

SAL GILL: Impressive.

JULIA HAMM: --Room Rater pineapple behind me so it is maybe sadly, possibly, the highlight of the very unfortunate pandemic for me.

SAL GILL: Yes, yes. So Room Rater, I take it that's a website where you can submit pictures and people, I guess, judge on the quality of the room?

JULIA HAMM: Yeah, It's not even a website. It's just two people. It's one Canadian and one American and I don't even know what their backstory is but they normally are rating people who don't usually submit themselves. They're actually typically like rating people who are actually on TV getting interviewed, but I think people like me sort of started picking up and submitting themselves to get rated. So it's just fun. You know, they rate the rooms but they also have some entertaining political commentary often that goes along with it.

SAL GILL: Interesting, interesting, interesting. Well, we can definitely take some lessons from you on that. I would love to. So Julia, let's dig in. So how did this become your passion and profession? How did you get involved in the energy space?

JULIA HAMM: Well, honestly it was by accident rather than by design. About a year out of college I applied for a job, dating myself here, but it was an ad in the Washington Post, literally printed ad in the physical newspaper that was a couple of sentences at most. So I knew very little about the job I was applying for, other than it was basically marketed as an entry level marketing position. And it turned out that the position was working for the company that at the time managed SEPA. SEPA didn't back then, in the late 90s, have its own employees but it was managed by another company.

And so ended up taking that position and SEPA was my primary client for a number of years. And just very quickly fell in love with the energy industry, really with the intersection, obviously, between the clean energy space. And, yeah, it's become my passion. So it was, again, it sort of happened by accident rather than design but it's hard to imagine doing anything other than focusing on the energy industry.

SAL GILL: Right, and I gather, Julia, that this is more than just a job for you. I hear you drive an electric vehicle. Would love to know--

JULIA HAMM: I do.

SAL GILL: --more about that. And I also hear that you have solar PV for your home. So we'd love to get some thoughts on that as well. But more importantly, Julia, why are actions like that important for all of us to consider?

JULIA HAMM: Well, the great news is with the cost declines we've seen across new technologies it's so much more affordable for people, regardless of what income bracket you're in. And so it really is a great opportunity. So I'll sort of take a step back for a moment. The house we lived in before this one was new construction but we were not involved in the building. The builder, it was a custom builder, he had built it. It was his first green home. He had put solar and battery storage in the house and this was back in the mid 2005, 2006.

SAL GILL: Wow!

JULIA HAMM: So pretty early on, right, I mean he was ahead of his time. And so we bought the house and, again, I was at SEPA at that time, so it was an added bonus for us to be able to purchase a home that already had solar and storage. But it was just such a great-- and since then we've moved and we have built a new house and it does have solar on it as well. But we don't have batteries because, honestly, where we live the power almost never goes out.

But I will tell you, when we were in that first house where the builder had put the system on, there were a couple of major snowstorms, actually, that had resulted in the power going out and we were fortunate. We were the only house in our neighborhood that had the refrigerator on and had a couple of outlets that were functioning because we had the solar and the batteries.

And so especially as we see increasing extreme weather events as a result of climate change, having the ability to be more independent, I think, is very attractive. And there are more and more options for customers, right. I mean, whether it's working directly with your utility to understand what options your utility has for you as a customer. Or it's working directly with a technology provider.

There's just so many options and same thing with EVs, right. We were a relatively early adopter, buying our EV a number of years ago, but it's just so exciting to see the number of models that are now starting to come out. The commitments that the OEM car makers have made to transitioning all of their models over time in the not very distant future to all be electric is just so exciting.

SAL GILL: So what electric wheels are you driving?

JULIA HAMM: I have a Tesla Model three.

SAL GILL: Nice, nice.

JULIA HAMM: Yeah, and I am not a car person but I love my car. And we will in the hopefully not too distant future be a two EV home. But we are waiting. My husband very much wants to get either an electric truck or some sort of large rugged sort of SUV style vehicle. So we're waiting for some of those models to start hitting the market. And then we'll get our second EV in here as quickly as we can.

SAL GILL: Yeah, I hear once you're on EVs, right, it's so hard to get away from them. The acceleration, the entire driving experience is very, very different.

JULIA HAMM: It is, it's amazing.

SAL GILL: It reminds me of a time when NARUC had a meeting, back when we used to travel, going back to 2019, and they actually as part of the conference they had all the major electric vehicles bring out their cars and you could actually test drive them. And I got to test drive the Audi e-tron I think it was. And that was pretty sweet but the price was also pretty sweet as well.

JULIA HAMM: Yeah, they call those ride and drive events. And actually ride and drive events have been proven to be one of the most effective ways to expose customers to EVs and really help drive sales. Because you're right, once you drive one it is hard to not want one desperately and to go back driving your old fashioned car.

SAL GILL: Absolutely, absolutely. So Julia when you think about the year ahead, and maybe even the next 30 years ahead, what are some of the big energy issues on your mind? You know and is there much overlap between them from a short-term and a long-term priority type perspective?

JULIA HAMM: Good question. Well, so the way we think about things at SEPA is really through three pathways of focus. And obviously we've chosen those three pathways because we think that they are critical areas of focus for the industry.

And so those are, the first one, is regulatory and business innovation. And that really is focused on the fact that within the electric utility sector, both the way utilities operate and the way the bodies that regulate them operate, you know investor owned utilities are just a portion of the utility sector but they serve a very large portion of the country. So the investor and utilities are regulated by state public utility commissions. And so both the way utilities operate with their business model and the way they're regulated by their commissions were designed when the power system was very different, right. When the normal way for things to be done was large central station power plants that produced electricity and then that electricity flowed one way through a wire to customers. Pretty simple.

But now the system is so much more complex with customers, with all the things we've been talking about, EVs, solar on rooftops and other places and batteries in people's garages, all of these things change the dynamic and really allow a much more important role for customers in this equation. And so we really do need to see increased innovation and evolution of utility business models as well as the way that state regulatory commissions operate. Both in terms of their processes, the practices, the tools that they use, as well as the actual regulatory construct that ultimately drives utilities decisions. So that's the first big area of focus for us.

The second is around grid integration. And that's just recognizing that, again, with all of these new technologies we have to evolve how we plan and operate the system. It can't be done the same way it's been done in the past. With these new technologies comes many new opportunities but we can't do things the same way we've always done them. It can't be the status quo.

So there are a number of things that have to happen in terms of interoperability for new technology standards. So that as technologies are coming out, for example electric vehicle charging. We need standardization so that those systems are interoperable rather than customized based on each different technology company's own self-interest.

And so there's just a whole series of things in this area of grid integration. And one particular piece in the grid integration bucket that relates to the second part of your question about, sort of, the long term objectives and how do those mesh with some of the short term issues. One big focus for us in grid integration is around resilience and the role that microgrids can play in resilience.

So important distinction, people often, even in our own industry, sort of mix up the words reliability and resiliency. Reliability is essentially keeping the power on, making sure it doesn't go off. But resilience is how quickly and how well do you bounce back if it does go off or how do you manage in a case where there is an event where the grid has to go down?

And so we're spending a lot of time thinking about microgrids, the role of microgrids. And obviously with recent events in Texas, with the severe snow and ice and cold and all of the blackouts that that resulted in, it's just yet another example of, I think, the important role that microgrids can play to make sure that all customers aren't left out in the cold or the dark but there are at least some localized areas that can have power when the larger grid goes down. So that's one very specific example, I think, where our long-term focus is very critical to the near term.

And then the third big area of focus for SEPA is around electrification. And that is a focus both with the transportation sector but also increasingly starting to think about buildings. So as the country's power supply becomes cleaner and cleaner and cleaner with the additions of more and more renewable energy, it makes sense that we should be looking to transition our transportation system to electricity so that our cars, our, trucks, our buses, that all of these vehicles are powered by clean electricity from the grid rather from fossil fuels.

So those are the big areas where we're focused on. Obviously there's lots of subcategories within all of that. But those are really the places where we feel as though in order to get us to this carbon-free-- while our vision is a carbon free energy system, SEPA's day in and day out work is focused on helping the electric power sector with the piece that they have to contribute to that energy system decarbonization. So yeah, that's what we're up to.

SAL GILL: So Julia, you talked about the electrification piece which is absolutely, it's growing very, very quickly and there's a lot of interest in there. And it's also very much in line with the decarbonization mandates that many governments around the world have now. But separately there is another major revolution that's also occurring in the space or realm of digitalization and I was curious to hear your thoughts on what role do you think advances in artificial intelligence or machine learning, for instance, may play in the push for this clean carbon-free energy and economy?

JULIA HAMM: Yeah, it's a great question and I think it's going to play a critical role. I mean, if you think about, I mentioned earlier the increasing complexity of the electric power system we have to have digitization and we have to have artificial intelligence to help us manage that increasing complexity, the amount of data that's now being produced. One of the big topics that often comes up in a variety of different conversations is smart meters, right. We're fortunate that we finally have smart meters deployed in a significant portion of the US.

SAL GILL: That took some time to get there, but--

JULIA HAMM: It took a really long time to get there. We're still not done, but we're still not to a place where we're yet fully utilizing all of the capability that the smart meters and the resulting data could provide. And so there's continued room for advancement there in order to really fully leverage that particular piece of technology, just as one example.

But another sort of thread I'll pull on is as it comes to understanding customers, right. So we talked earlier about the fact that back in the day, you had large central station power plants, they delivered energy to the customer, end of story. Now, it's the two way power flows. We have customers generating their own electricity, sometimes they're generating for their own use, sometimes they're generating more than they can use so they want to export that back to the grid.

And one of the real planning challenges in front of us is that electric utilities, in particular I'm talking about distribution utilities at this point, distribution utilities need to make investment decisions, typically make investment decisions on a very long time frame. Talking about decades, right. And so how do you make decisions about what distribution system upgrades you need to make 20 years from now if you don't know what decisions your customers are going to be making that are going to impact the system needs?

And so there is this whole new need for utilities to be able to use historical data and forecasts to really try to be able to anticipate customer adoption of technologies. So that that can then influence their investment decisions and ultimately, of course, customers are the ones paying for those investments so it's in customers best interest for that to happen effectively. So the need for utilities to be able to have this whole new level of sophistication about customer segmentation, right.

And really there's so much that can happen on that front through artificial intelligence and other technology of that nature that, just our own human capabilities, it would take us much longer to get there. So that's another example. I mean obviously, we could keep going on and on about the opportunities and the space but it really gets down to the increasing complexity of the system really requires all of these new data analytics, digitization, in terms of being able to optimize the system.

SAL GILL: Yeah, Absolutely. So Julia, there's a lot of mandates, there's a lot of investor sentiments that are really also driving a lot of the decarbonization initiatives and perhaps you can call them green initiatives around the world. But from where you sit, how can people trust that all these goals and priorities come with real tangible benefits and that this all isn't just greenwashing?

JULIA HAMM: Yeah, no, great question and it's something we spend a lot of time on at SEPA particularly as it relates to electric utilities and their commitments or their targets that they're setting to get to net zero or carbon-free. And first, I just want to say I believe it's critically important and valuable that they are setting targets, right. So if you don't know where you're trying to go you're never going to get there. And so setting a target in and of itself is valuable, but you are right. A target by itself is not enough, right.

And so what we're looking for when utilities, and not just utilities, but whatever entity, whether it's a state government or a municipality or a large corporation, when someone's setting a target what we like to see is that when they publicly announce what that target is they also have interim goals between now and whatever that end target date is decades out from now. So if my target is carbon free by 2050 we want to see someone say well our end goal is this by 2050, but we have an interim goal for 2025 or 2030 to get here because that's much more tangible. And then also, accompanying that, very specific actions that they're going to take in the near term that are going to lead directly down that path.

So whether it is a commitment to we're going to have all of our coal our coal plants closed by x date, and/or we will add x megawatts of wind and solar by x date, and/or. So we're sort of looking for three pieces. We're looking for the long term end goal target, some sort of interim target, as well as tangible action steps that are in the near term that are going to get them towards that goal.

SAL GILL: So in a similar vein, we've also are coming to some recent events now. So we've been seeing clean energy and renewables become the subject of some powerful misinformation or disinformation efforts around challenges such as what happened in Texas recently. So what's your perspective on how obstacles like that may affect the push for this carbon free energy system and perhaps any thoughts on how we may even combat that?

JULIA HAMM: Well, the good news is I believe we've reached a tipping point, right. So I don't think there is any going back from here. There may be detractors who are successful at slowing things down a bit here or there but as a nation, and honestly I think as the majority of the globe, we've reached the tipping point where it is obvious that we're moving in this direction and it's happening at all levels, right.

It's happening now, thank goodness, at the federal level here in the US. That's been happening at the federal level in other parts of the world for many years. So it's happened at the federal level, it's been happening at the state level for a long time in the US but we're seeing increasing focus on that. It's happening at the local government level, it's happening at the corporate level, now it's happening at the utility level.

So it's unfortunate that there remain people who believe we don't need to go that direction. And they're going to, obviously, put forward their best effort to try to slow things down but we've got the momentum, right. Especially now with the Biden administration being on the same page and really aggressive, not just on the same page, but really aggressively moving in that direction, is just going to I think, ultimately those detractors are going to be fewer and fewer or at least less and less successful in their efforts.

SAL GILL: Yes, and I think legislation is going to play a major role in that too and I for one am looking forward to some more executive actions coming on climate change, but we'll stay tuned for that. Julia, this has been a terrific conversation. Thank you so much for your insights and your time and we're so grateful that we got this opportunity to connect with you today.

JULIA HAMM: Thanks so much for having me. It's been fun.

SAL GILL: Absolutely, absolutely and we look forward to having you again sometime soon, as well. So thank you again. Here's a reminder for our listeners that they can find Julia on Twitter @JuliaHamm and they can learn more about SEPA at SEPApower.org. That is SEPApwer.org.

OK, Julia, so here is one last curveball for you. We're building an Electrifying AI playlist on Spotify during season two and you get to pick a song. So what is that song going to be?

JULIA HAMM: Oh, see this is what you don't know about me I'm horrible at this sort of thing, honestly, like a really quick story. Like honestly, I was in a long car ride once with a friend and he was like, what are your top 10 songs, and I'm like I can't even think of one song. So I don't know. I'm going to have to get back to you on that.

SAL GILL: OK. I was going to say there's some bonus points too if it includes power or energy or electricity somehow.

JULIA HAMM: Yeah, you hit right in my weak spot with that question.

SAL GILL: Well, that's fine. So for our listeners, and for Julia now, we would love to hear what song do you want us to include and you can leave your music suggestions in the comments or tweet them to me @TheElectricSal. And we'd be happy to get that included. We might just include your pick and send you some cool Electrifying AI swag as well to say thank you. So folks, that is all for this episode. We'll see you again soon. Be safe and we'll be back. Thanks.