COVID-19 protocols help prepare electric industry for active hurricane season
With the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season officially beginning on June 1 and running through Nov. 30, the electric utility industry is prepared for what the federal government predicts will be a period fraught with above-normal activity.
In fact, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on May 21 predicted the likelihood this season of 13 to 19 named storms, six to 10 hurricanes, and three to six major hurricanes (Category 3 or higher). The Weather Channel in April predicted 18 named storms, nine hurricanes and four major hurricanes. And active weather already has started this month with Tropical Storms Arthur and Bertha, which formed off the southeast coast of the United States.
At the same time, COVID-19 has significantly changed the way Americans use electricity, forcing utilities to maneuver multiple constraints, such as maintaining social distancing guidelines to protect the health of its workforce and customers.
One of the ways electric utility companies are responding is via an updated resource guide developed by the Electricity Subsector Coordinating Council (ESCC) to ensure processes and procedures are in place to keep the workforce healthy and safe while the companies work to maintain the continuity of their operations during any possible threat.
A major focus of the resource guide, entitled Assessing and Mitigating the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19): Version 8, which was updated on May 11, includes “COVID-19 protocols,” which were recently put to the test during the deadly storms that hit 21 states on Easter weekend. Updates to the guide were made based on the lessons learned by the impacted electric companies, and more updates have been added as the coinciding pandemic unfolded.
“So far, the lights are on and the gas is flowing despite the fact that the pandemic has really slowed down our U.S. economies,” said Scott Aaronson, vice president of security and preparedness at the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), which represents the nation’s investor-owned electric companies.
EEI on Thursday hosted a call to discuss the COVID-19 protocols that America’s electric companies have put in place ahead of the 2020 hurricane season.
Aaronson, who said that EEI and its member companies worked through the ESCC to develop and update the resource guide, was among numerous experts charged by the council with identifying new and/or future challenges, such as threats to mutual assistance in the age of COVID-19.
“One of the hallmarks of this industry is its collaborative nature,” Aaronson said. “We operate one big machine: the energy grid of North America. So, through that common cause, we have to work collaboratively to maintain operations.”
And that’s true for all threats, he said, including cybersecurity threats, natural disasters and pandemics.
Aaronson said that because the power industry is rooted in continuity and contingency planning, it does not have the luxury of not being operational as the services it provides are critical to the lives and safety of their customers, as well as to the nation’s economy and security.
So much of the industry’s continuity planning, in fact, is founded in responding to potential pandemics, such as SARS, MERS and H1N1, among others, which presented plot exercises that have helped the industry figure out ways to work together on contingency planning against all threats, he added.
But as this pandemic has proven, “the details of it matter,” said Aaronson.
For example, COVID-19 is highly contagious and people may be asymptomatic for up to 10 days, explained Aaronson, so these details dictate the operational protections that must be put in place, such as the needed personal protective equipment that will help the industry keep its workers on the front lines “healthy, safe and in the fight.”
The resource guide, he said, is a compendium of shared experience and collective wisdom in real-time from across the entire sector to help in preparedness against “the proverbial wolf that may be at our doorstep,” Aaronson said, such as the upcoming hurricane season on top of the pandemic.
Stan Connally, executive vice president of operations at Southern Company Services Inc., which provides electricity generation services to the residential, commercial and industrial sectors across Georgia, joined Aaronson in leading the team that culled all of that information to update the resource guide.
One of the guide’s main focuses is on Mutual Assistance Considerations, which includes proven and tested emergency response plans — including for pandemics and natural disasters like hurricanes — that many companies have had in place for many years that may be activated across the sector, Connally said during the EEI call.
COVID-19 “has brought about new learnings” that have been incorporated into the resource guide that serves as a framework for the power sector, he said.
“Our industry has adapted very quickly to COVID-19 to support our communities,” he said. “Our industry continues to come together, to learn from each other, and to work together to identify the right protocols to serve our customers and our communities. And this time is no different.”
For example, the industry has learned what it will take to exercise CDC guidance toward maintaining social distancing as well as an ample number of facial masks during a major storm like a hurricane, Connally said, adding that such protocols were put in place to help the industry think differently from a logistics perspective during what may prove to be an active hurricane season.
Other related protocols included managing the workforce to keep it healthy and safe and managing the distribution of essential equipment. Connally said a dispersed workforce that was broken up into smaller staging areas helped minimize the number of personnel in any one spot who had to work together, thereby reducing the spread of COVID-19.
Workers also were allowed to sleep in single rooms at nearby hotels and motels rather than sleeping two to a room, for instance, he said, adding that at the same time, materials were distributed from throughout the supply chain rather than from just a few distributors, which was advantageous in reducing power restoration time, among other benefits.
Recently, Southern Company was among several companies across Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia that got to put those protocols into practice when they responded during Easter weekend and the following weekend to “some very strong spring storms with high winds, multiple tornadoes and heavy rains” that also forced them to call upon the industry’s mutual assistance network for a shared workforce.
“Over 600,000 of our customers were impacted,” said Connally, “but we were fortunate that we could return service to most of them within 24 hours. But that happened because of the reliance on and the response from our partners.”
For these storms, he said the impacted companies received mutual assistance from more than 1,000 workers from 10 different states.
“We practiced all of our different protocols to ensure the health and safety of our workers and we were able to return service very quickly,” Connally said. “While these storms certainly don’t measure up to large hurricanes, we think they were incredibly good test cases, if nothing else, to prove out our COVID protocols.”
Connally added that the industry also has performed after-action briefings with all of the utilities involved and shared learned lessons from those storms. Such data will be used to further revise industry practices in preparation for the upcoming hurricane season.
Such ongoing collaboration across the industry to ensure reliability, he said, has once again been proven over the last few months and he thinks utilities are very prepared for the upcoming hurricane season.
