EEI expert details disaster preparedness strategies
Considerations for what power utilities and other service providers should do to prepare for major natural disasters should be underway and ongoing, according to experts.
“It’s such an important topic for our entire industry,” said Julie Brown, a commissioner with the Florida Public Service Commission. “And across the nation, there is a need to be proactive.”
Utilities, regulators and the federal government “need to address the resilience of our infrastructure and our responsiveness, as well,” said Brown, who moderated the Feb. 12 general session, “Pragmatic Planning for a Major Disaster,” during the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) 2020 Winter Policy Summit held in Washington, D.C.
All stakeholders must be prepared “for the absolute worst” that results from long-term, large-scale natural disasters, Brown said during the panel discussion.
Among the six panelists was Scott Aaronson, vice president of security and preparedness at the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), which represents the nation’s investor-owned electric companies, who outlined four strategies that he thinks take top priority when prepping for natural disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, wildfires, and extreme winter snowstorms.
“The first thing we need to do is communicate,” Aaronson said.
This means communication with customers, partners, regulators, constituents, and other stakeholders that your company is preparing now to protect some of the nation’s most critical infrastructure, he said.
“We are all first responders,” said Aaronson, channeling a former FEMA administrator, “so the more we can do to help people understand what their responsibilities as individuals in the community are, the better prepared we all can be and the better outcomes we will have if any incidents do occur.”
Secondly, it’s important to develop partnerships, Aaronson advised.
“Electricity is the foundation for a lot of society,” but it can’t operate alone during emergencies, he said, pointing to other companies in the water, transportation, financial, and communication sectors.
Without communications, for instance, a power company can’t communicate with workers in the field to restore electricity; without financial services, a utility loses access to capital markets and can’t make necessary payments; and without transportation pipelines, there’s no access to fuel, he said.
“There are a lot of ways to impact the electricity sector short of hitting the electricity sector so we’re working collaboratively” to ensure that what the sector does now “under blue skies” helps prepare it for whatever might happen in the future, said Aaronson.
The third strategy is to “exercise, exercise, exercise — and that doesn’t mean go to the gym, although you should be doing that, too,” he joked.
Rather, exercising means that the way to develop partnerships and relationships is to learn from experience “and you have to practice like you play,” said Aaronson.
In November 2019, for instance, more than 6,500 participants representing more than 425 organizations from across the electric power industry and federal and state governments, participated in the North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s (NERC) energy grid security and incident response exercise, GridEx V.
The two-day exercise was designed to test cyber and physical security incident response protocols and coordination among industry and government stakeholders from the United States, Canada and Mexico, according to EEI, which said industry and government officials received an invaluable opportunity to evaluate crisis communications and security and response plans toward identifying new risks and to develop actionable mitigation strategies.
GridEx also helped participants bolster cross-sector coordination and develop a more detailed understanding of interdependencies and potential impacts to other critical infrastructure sectors, according to EEI.
“Exercise, learn from experience, rinse and repeat,” Aaronson told the NARUC summit audience. “We really have to advance the ball on how we prepare and respond to incidents.”
Lastly, he advised investing in resilience.
“There are things that we can be doing on the front end to help us [continue] normal operations, to prepare and have usual systems responses, to have spare equipment stockpiles, to be able to operate when an incident happens — maybe not perfectly… but to keep the lights on for the purposes of economic and national security,” said Aaronson.
The value of resilience cannot be overstated, he added, pointing out that resilience ensures the ability to operate under normal circumstances.
Preparing against natural disasters, Aaronson said, requires asking, “What can we be doing now so that we aren’t caught flat-footed.”
