Modernizing the Grid: Challenges and Strategies

Summer rewind: Hydro Ottawa recently unveiled its largest investment plan ever, with a five-year focus on modernizing and strengthening the grid. The way we’re consuming energy is changing, and this investment plan focuses on four key areas that highlight why Hydro Ottawa is taking action, and how they plan on doing it.

 

Hydro Ottawa’s Chief Operating Officer, Guillaume Paradis, joins thinkenergy to dive a little deeper into those focus areas, and why they matter, with host Trevor Freeman.

 

Related links

 

●       Guillaume Paradis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/guillaume-paradis-30a47721

●       Trevor Freeman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-freeman-p-eng-8b612114

●       Hydro Ottawa: https://hydroottawa.com/en 

 

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Transcript:

Trevor Freeman  00:00

Hi everyone. Well, summer is here, and the think energy team is stepping back a bit to recharge and plan out some content for the next season. We hope all of you get some much needed downtime as well, but we aren't planning on leaving you hanging over the next few months, we will be re releasing some of our favorite episodes from the past year that we think really highlight innovation, sustainability and community. These episodes highlight the changing nature of how we use and manage energy, and the investments needed to expand, modernize and strengthen our grid in response to that. All of this driven by people and our changing needs and relationship to energy as we move forward into a cleaner, more electrified future, the energy transition, as we talk about many times on this show. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll be back with all new content in September. Until then, happy listening.

 

Trevor Freeman  00:55

Welcome to think energy, a podcast that dives into the fast changing world of energy through conversations with industry leaders, innovators and people on the front lines of the energy transition. Join me, Trevor Freeman, as I explore the traditional, unconventional and up and coming facets of the energy industry. If you have any thoughts, feedback or ideas for topics we should cover, please reach out to us at think energy at hydroottawa.com.

 

Trevor Freeman  01:19

hi everyone, and welcome back. A few episodes back I talked about some of the important work that happens at the distribution level to maintain and expand our grid, and I tried to connect the dots between that work and the broader societal energy transition that is happening at all levels. How the work we do at the distribution level is really important and tied to some of those larger projects that may get a little bit more news and attention that energy transition, which, as you're hopefully aware by now, is ongoing right now. It's not something of the future. It's happening today. That energy transition is multifaceted, but from an electricity and electrification perspective, the distribution utility, ie the Hydro Ottawa, of whatever jurisdiction you're in, is at the very leading edge of many of the changes we need to see within our electricity system to support that transition. So today, I'd like to go a little bit further with that topic and focus on Hydro Ottawa's next five year investment plan, which covers the 2026 to 2030 period. This will be the largest investment plan in our history as a company. And I wanted to dig into what we have identified as key focus areas for investment in the coming five years, with more than 100 years of operating a large, complex distribution network, Hydro Ottawa is embarking on a pretty significant journey to modernize and strengthen our grid for the challenges and opportunities ahead of us. We have filed our 2026, to 2030, Electricity Distribution rate application, as it's called, with the Ontario Energy Board, and this is a standard practice for all local distribution companies in Ontario. That's what we have to do. As a reminder for our listeners, the Ontario Energy Board, or OEB, as we often call it, is our independent regulator. Their mission in this process is to strike a balance between ensuring the financial health and operational needs of utilities like Hydro Ottawa, while also safeguarding the affordability and reliability of the service for the customer. So they want to make sure that we're spending enough to tackle the right projects on the grid, to make sure it stays operational while not spending too much. They meticulously scrutinize every detail of these applications to ensure that the proposed rates are just and reasonable, and that all investments are prudent and really in the public interest. So we have gotten a number of questions about the plan and specifically around where is the money going to go? What are you going to actually spend these dollars that you're requesting on? And why are these investments necessary? What benefits are they actually going to bring to our community? And often we get the question of, does this mean less outages or shorter outages? So I want to dig into that. I want to talk a little bit about what we've got planned and what the impact will be, and what the impact would be if we don't do those things, and to help me walk through that energy roadmap, that plan that we've put together. I've got Guillaume Paradis joining me today. Guillaume is the Chief Operating Officer of generation and distribution here at Hydro Ottawa, and he's going to join me, and we're going to talk through this. Guillaume and his teams are responsible for the planning, design, operation, construction and maintenance of our electrical power distribution system, and in his role, he leads the teams that are directly accountable for ensuring the safe, efficient and reliable delivery of electricity to our customers. Today, I'm going to ask Guillaume, really, to walk us through the details of. Our investment plan, how it was shaped, how we came up with these specific areas, and what benefits are going to be realized by our community and the broader energy landscape. Guillaume, Paradis, welcome to the show. Pleasure to be here. Trevor, okay, so, Guillaume, this is Hydro Ottawa's largest investment plan ever, and I'd like you to start by talking us through the primary drivers behind what our five year investment plan is.

 

Guillaume Paradis  05:29

Yeah, so as you've heard, as you've seen, we're in a historical, or historically, you know, unique point in the evolution of our industry. Electricity underpins most of our societal aspirations with respect to creating, you know, a more sustainable future, creating the future we want to leave for the next generations. And our distribution system underpins a lot of those aspirations in simple ways and in more complex ways. So, you know, a simple way is that essentially, for, you know, the well being of our society, for our customers, the residents of Ottawa, and really any area, to live the lives they're hoping to live, to, you know, enjoy the benefits of modern life. Electricity is a critical underpinning in any way you can imagine and you know, think about so. Our service has always been very important. It's just become even more critical as a foundational block for you know, the lives that we're hoping to live and we're living today in our modern society. So that, combined with other aspirations related to where we can reducing our carbon footprint and integrating more renewable energy resources within our footprint, it creates a situation where there's a significant need for us to invest, continue to invest and reinvest in our infrastructure to deliver those outcomes for customers.

 

Trevor Freeman  07:16

Yeah, I think, I mean, we talk a lot about the energy transition on the show, and if, if you think about, you know, let's say our previous rate application five years ago, the energy transition was a thing we knew about it, but it was like a thing of tomorrow where, hey, that's going to come soon. The difference now, I assume, and maybe you can speak to this, is we're seeing that. We're seeing the change now.

 

Guillaume Paradis  07:40

Yeha, you're exactly correct, like we're in it now. So we've been talking about it for some time, both from a like a general societal aspiration standpoint, but also from a technological standpoint. For a very long time, we talked about electric vehicles having an impact and becoming more commonplace. We talked about leveraging automation to deliver our services. We talked about two way power flows. So we've been building toward this moment, and now we're essentially in it, if you will, and we're seeing all those things, the confluence of all those longer term trends, sort of manifest themselves in real demand for our system, in real changes in our customers want to use energy, and we're in the middle of that, and we're, you know, to enable those things happening in our community here in Ottawa.

 

Trevor Freeman  08:36

Yeah. So it's like the business as usual, a lot of the same things, and we're going to talk about some of this. About some of the specifics, but a lot of the same thing, things we would normally do just a lot more of at the same time, as like also pivoting a little bit to meet some of these new needs, like charging transportation and like heating our spaces, more of electricity, like some of these new needs that didn't exist are not to the same extent. So it's like more of the same plus other new stuff, and we're gonna talk about that in a minute.

 

Guillaume Paradis  09:11

Yeah. So, you know, we always would say that the future of the energy sector was very exciting, and things were coming and like, change was upon us, and now, essentially, we're, we're living it, right? So you have to carry on with the responsibilities that you always had, and meanwhile, figure out how to deliver those new outcomes, those new services that previously weren't required or expected, right?

 

Trevor Freeman  09:39

So let's, let's kind of get into some of the details here. So there are four key capital investment categories in this plan, so growth and electrification, aging, infrastructure, grid modernization and grid resilience. So we're going to dive into the specifics of these in a minute, but we're. To start off with why these four? How did we land on these four as the main categories?

 

Guillaume Paradis  10:07

Yeah, so there's, there's various ways you can categorize investments. There's a lot of drivers that will lead us to invest in an area or replace some infrastructure somewhere in our system, these categories capture quite well. What is at the core of various investments. So for one specific investment, there will be multiple drivers, but these ones sort of in an elegant way, I would say, capture. You know why investments are occurring, what the primary driver is for those investments, and they help translate that for folks who are not involved day to day in planning the electricity system, that's our responsibility. What we're trying to communicate is why we're taking action where we're taking action. So those categories, in my mind, capture that really well. They also tie our investments to broad trends that people should be aware of, and they're a way to make sure that we have, you know, a clear baseline for a conversation as we proceed with those plans.

 

Trevor Freeman  11:18

Yeah, one thing I find, and you know, in my role, I talk to customers a lot, and I find these are fairly easy to explain, or at least, I hope they are, if you're listening and you disagree, let us know. But people can kind of get their heads around why the utility needs to do each of these four things, and some, in some ways, they align with other sectors as well. So I think, and I hope, as we carry on our conversation here, it'll be easy to sort of build out the picture of what we're doing in each of those four areas. So why don't we? Let's dive right in then and look at the specifics. And starting with growth and electrification, what are the specific investments that are planned to support the growing energy needs of our community, you know. And we've already started talking about electric vehicles, other electrified aspects of our lives, like, what? What falls into this category?

 

Guillaume Paradis  12:11

Yeah, so with respect to growth and electrification, um, there's a few underlying trends that drive the investment requirements. So as you've suggested, as you mentioned, you know, there's an evolution of how our customers use energy at home, day to day. EVS being obviously a primary example that everyone will be very aware of. Just, you know, driving around town, frankly, the difference in how regularly you'll see electric vehicles in our community relative to even five years ago is is pretty dramatic, and that is having a long term, you know, impact over time, likewise for technologies like heat pumps at home, and just generally, the growth of our community. So those elements just drive a longer-term trend of more demand being present in our community, within our system. And in addition to that, one big change that we've seen over the last few years is more large scale demand request coming into our service territory, typically, that will be large customers wanting to do something different with energy. So it could go. It could be driven by a few different kinds of corporate aspirations. What we're seeing a lot of are instances where large corporations decide, or institutions decide, to do away with more carbon intensive energy sources, so they will look to us and electricity to replace what previously would have been another fuel source that maybe is less green. So we're seeing that affecting choices some of those type of customers are making, and then at the same time, we're seeing just large requests related to a different type of energy demand. So companies wanting to, for example, bring back their R and D efforts to a data center that they operate and they control, so that they have more control over cybersecurity elements, and then, likewise, with where their data flows to and how it's being managed. So we're seeing large requests at a rate that we didn't previously, and that those requests are significant enough that they require us to make very major investments, like new substations, like building a. New feeders again at a pace that far outpaces what we've seen historically. So the underlying trend of more small demand creating an impact at the aggregate level, combined with those larger requests, that's creating a significant need for us to invest in responding to that growth in the electrification drivers within our system.

 

Trevor Freeman  15:29

Yeah, so this is in response to what we're seeing our customers do. And that's it's something that has come up before in conversation here. Of you know, we we respond to what we see our customers doing and what our customers are asking us. They're asking for more power. We have to respond to provide that more power. So this, this kind of area of investment, is really just building out the grid and all of the assets and infrastructure that are that make up the grid to be able to meet the needs of our customers, which are growing faster than they were previously? Is that fair to say?

 

Guillaume Paradis  16:05

Yeah, and for us, it's an interesting balancing act we have to find where we have to anticipate our customers’ needs and the demand that's upon us, but we can't get ahead of it, because that would draw investments that potentially would, you know, later become stranded, or, you know, create a cost burden for our customers. So we have to know where the demand is going, and we have to be ready to respond and connect new customers, but we can't get too far ahead of it, because ultimately, you know, if we invest too soon, that's, you know, a burden for all our customers. So sometimes I, I would say there's that misconception that somehow, we're, we're creating our own forecast and believing our own forecast. And really, it's a bit simpler than that, we take in the request and we respond to those requests. We have to be able to look out a few years to make sure that we're not missing, you know, anything significant that would have an impact on our system, but we don't get too far ahead from an investment standpoint.

 

Trevor Freeman  17:19

Okay, so Guillaume, we've been talking about the more traditional aspects of our grid, you know, pulls, wires, transformers, et cetera. But I know that we're also looking at how we can deploy what we call non wire solutions to also help manage capacity on our grid. Can you just explain what some of these solutions are and how we're going to use them in conjunction with our traditional assets to manage grid needs.

 

Guillaume Paradis  17:43

Yeah, so normal alternatives are essentially the concept that without having to install traditional infrastructure, think poles, new Transformers, new cables, underground, you may be able to harvest existing resources within your footprint to help you manage operational needs. Be it like certain peaks that have a short duration, other scenarios of constraints where, rather than building net new infrastructure, which is expensive and time consuming, you might be able to optimize I'll call it the use of embedded resources in a manner that actually meets your operational objectives. So the way you would do that is by using combination of resources. Typically, you would look at small scale embedded storage. So if it exists in the system, you would actually leverage it if, if you could, otherwise, you might install some in a very targeted manner that helps you meet those operational needs. And then otherwise, you would leverage customer resources. So that's either existing generation that is owned by customers, or which is more typical, you know their ability to adjust their demand at certain times to meet your operational constraints. So the idea there is that you can do a business case, you can do an evaluation of what it would take to engage all these resources to get the same operational outcome as you would if you build the new infrastructure, and compare the two on a cost basis. And actually, in some instances, see scenarios where those non wire alternatives actually beat out large scale infrastructure upgrades from a financial standpoint. So it's, it's an evolving area. We have a few pockets within the city that we're targeting for programs like those ones, and we expect, over time, as more embedded resources proliferate, as more customer devices become controllable, we'll have a great. Greater opportunity, in fact, to leverage those non wire alternatives, or those non traditional solutions to meet our operational requirements.

 

Trevor Freeman  20:08

Great. So this is a combination of you know, Hydro Ottawa is planning to invest in in some assets, you know, be they battery or otherwise, on our side of the meter. We call that in front of the meter to help manage grid needs, while also looking for opportunities to partner with customers you know in the aggregate, so you know 100 or 1000 customers at once, to say if we need to call on your devices to either inject into the grid or to ramp back your operations, that will help us manage grid needs while the customer still maintains control. Is that fair to say?

 

Guillaume Paradis  20:47

Yeah, that's fair, and that's an emerging capacity we have. So if our ability to control and call upon a very large number of small devices and customer devices has grown and is growing and will be over the next few years. And with that, our capacity to then draw from those resources to respond to operational circumstances is also increasing and will give us options we just wouldn't have had in the past. So it's just a better way of utilizing available energy resources a more refined way, and one that probably wasn't available to us at scale 10 years ago.

 

Trevor Freeman  21:29

Yeah, and the driver behind all this is what's the best, most cost effective way to address that grid need? Some cases it's going to be the poles and wires and transformers. In some cases, it's going to be these non wire solutions, and it's part of the planning of the grid to identify where does each technology make sense.

 

Guillaume Paradis  21:50

Absolutely. So again, it's a more refined way of assessing options and ensuring that we identify the most cost effective strategies possible.

 

Trevor Freeman  22:02

Perfect, great. Okay, so that's the growth and electrification section. Let's move to aging infrastructure, which is about a third of this investment plan. So this may seem like a softball to start with, but what are some of the challenges posed by aging infrastructure? Maybe talk to us a little bit about what that infrastructure is when it comes to utility grid, and then what are what are we doing with this investment plan to address that aging infrastructure?

 

Guillaume Paradis  22:31

Yeah, so aging infrastructure is a very clear and appropriate descriptor here. So we invest in assets that are long lived, think 5060, years plus in some instances, and you know, eventually you use them, you leverage them over, you know, many decades. And at some point, those assets deteriorate beyond a point where they're no longer able to provide the service that our customers expect. So that would be failures, which leads to reliability issues in parts of our system. So one at one point or another in the life cycle of those assets, depending on how they're being used, what environment they are operated in, you have to replace them. What we try to do is assess them on a risk basis. And when we say risk, we mean, what impact can they have on our customers if they were to fail? Impacts can be things like safety risk. It could be, of course, reliability issues. It could limit our ability to service our customers. And so we assess risk on an ongoing basis, looking at those assets over decades. And eventually we get to a point where the risk has to be addressed, and that typically takes the form of or it can take the form of an outright replacement through the life cycle of all those assets, all of our assets. We do maintenance, we inspect them, we try to see if there are other things we can do before we replace them. But you get to a point ultimately, where the only option that's viable is to actually replace and then you have to go in and take action, physically in the field. Now what becomes a little complicated is, as you can imagine, it's one thing to put infrastructure up when a field being converted to a subdivision, or the city's growing and it's all brand new. You know, infrastructure being developed to support the growth, but decades later, when you come back, 60-70, years plus, in some cases, you're in someone's backyard. You're in the middle of an intersection where multiple utilities have installed their own infrastructure. So you have to coordinate that things have been moved over time. So getting access to the infrastructure is more difficult. Difficult, and so replacing many decades later is a lot more involved than putting up new infrastructure in the first place, and the type of infrastructure that we're talking about here probably falls into three major categories. So there's the overhead infrastructure you see around town. So really, when you and you shouldn't do that while you're driving, but if you're walking ideally, and you're looking at the beautiful hydro infrastructure around Ottawa, what you'll see are very old poles that need attention. So that's very visible, right? We have wood poles, you know, in a lot of the areas of our city, and you get to a point where structurally, they're not as strong as they used to be. They've weathered many storms, and they need attention. And then otherwise, it's the Transformers you might see on those poles. And that would be the boxes that are hanging from the poles, the ones that look like they, you know, predate the Cold War are the ones we're going after, and we need to give some attention to today. And then on the underground side, similar infrastructure, it's cables in in the ground, so in some instances, it's buried directly in someone's backyard. That was a an approach people took many decades back. Now, you can imagine it's very convenient when you're building it, but not so much when you're trying to get it out of the ground and put new cables into the ground. So there's cables that need replacing. They've, you know, been damaged or creating reliability issues. The transformers that go with that as well might need attention. And again, as I mentioned before, you know, decades later, that transformer may be right behind someone's pool in their backyard, and they've done some real nice landscaping, and accessing it for a replacement is a lot more complicated. So underground infrastructure, in fact, is one of the more complicated replacements to execute. And then, you know, if you move up from there, you're looking at substation equipment. So that's the stuff that's fenced in across the city where power is being delivered from to our customers across the city. And so those assets may be a bit less complicated in terms of managing sites and access, but certainly complicated in terms of logistics costs of the equipment. Those are very, very large assets that require a lot of planning to replace, because they're critical to our system, and we can't afford to have them be out of service too long.

 

Trevor Freeman  27:49

Got you and just for our listeners, while Guillaume talking, I pulled up a few quick stats here. So we, Hydro Ottawa on our service territory, has over 6000 kilometers of conductor so of wires and just under 50,000 poles out in our service territory. So as you can imagine, a lot of that is in great shape, and some of it isn't, and some of it needs to be addressed, just like you're talking about here Guillaume.

 

Guillaume Paradis  28:17

Yeah, and that's helpful. Trevor. The thing that we often forget, especially for electricity distribution, is the sheer number of assets that can create a risk. So it's one thing to manage one large transformer and make sure it doesn't fail, but when you're talking about 1000s of assets dispersed around a very large service territory like Ottawa, making sure that we keep an eye on all of them at all times, making sure that we intervene at the exact time prior to a failure, to make sure we deliver the best service possible for our customers. That's really the essence of our challenge and what makes distribution unique versus other parts of our business, where it's maybe more centralized and you may be looking at a smaller set of assets.

 

Trevor Freeman  29:04

Yeah, absolutely okay, so obviously, it's important to maintain what we've got, in addition to building out that new stuff that we talked about earlier, maintaining and replacing what we have, so that you know our existing grid remains reliable. The next section of our investment plan is what we call grid modernization. Now that's something that we've talked about to varying levels of detail on this show before, but I'd like you to talk us through what is in this investment plan over the next five years. When we talk about grid modernization, what are we actually doing? What are some of the specific things that we're gonna put some of our investment towards?

 

Guillaume Paradis  29:45

Yeah, so grid monetization is, is a category that gets talked about a lot, but maybe is, I would say, a bit misunderstood, I think, because it sounds futuristic, people assume we're doing a. And very different things. And ultimately, in my mind, it's better leveraging technology to get good outcomes for our customers. It's really that simple. So as you can imagine, you know, as I talked about, we're looking at assets that have expected life of 50- 60-70, years when some of our assets were first installed, things like communication technology, things like IT, operational technology, weren't as advanced as they are today. Our ability to collect data in real time was not what it is today, and so nada we're we have an opportunity to reinvest and replace all assets. It's important that we do so in a manner that will allow us to drive essentially more performance or better performance out of the assets we put in our system, so that can take various forms. As I mentioned, getting better real time information is one of those ways in which we can leverage technology, what that allows us to do is better respond to outages, offer a better service by being more aware of what's happening at any given point in time, getting better information in near real time as to what assets are posing a risk to reliability because they've been utilized heavily, or they've seen a lot of faults, for example. And so building in that technological infrastructure as a layer that enhances the traditional investments that we've always made is sort of the right thing to do in a context where you want to optimize where you spend your dollars, and you don't want to have to go back and reinvest on the same assets or in the same parts of our system multiple times, uh, over, you know, the coming years, in the coming decades. So the grid monetization portfolio, essentially is our opportunity to, you know, very strategically, identify where we can put in technology that will allow us to get more of our assets and provide a better service for our customers. So simple things like automated devices that would be automated switches that we install on our overhead infrastructure, underground infrastructure that gives us a capacity during an outage to shift demand around and resupply our customers more rapidly than we would have been able to otherwise, and that gives us a capacity to provide a better service under contingency scenario. So very simple, right? It's telemetry. It's communication to a device. And rather than have someone physically go in the field and, you know, switch customers and try to move demand around, we can do that remotely from our control center, likewise, in the control center, putting in more telemetry to identify and proactively suggest to our operators how to restore power to customers. Again, is a simple thing in by today's standard, right? It's not competent technology. It's not complicated software, but it's a layer that didn't exist previously, where we can have software, you know, model based. Its tool suggest how best to optimize the restoration of power. And as we do that, our trade operators get to review and take action in an informed manner. So grid, modernization, again, is about making the most of today's available technology while we reinvest in our distribution system to make sure that the quality of our service, and the breadth of the services we can provide align, well, going forward, with our customers aspirations, and provide a quality service for many decades to come.

 

Trevor Freeman  34:15

Yeah, and I think it's important to remember, and you know this, this little saying has been out there in the industry, and I've used it before. Of the electricity grid is the world's largest machine. Like the grid itself is a piece of technology, and like any technology, we would not be happy if it stayed stagnant, like we want it to evolve with the latest and greatest and operate better and more efficiently, and the grid is no different, and so part of grid modernization is just keeping up with what's out there to make sure we are delivering the service that we deliver in the best way, in the most advanced way, in the most efficient way possible. With that. Guillaume, what about things like, you know, we hear a lot about more distributed energy resources, so more small-scale generation or storage out there on the grid that might be owned by the utility, but it might not be. It might be customer owned. What are we doing from a grid modernization perspective, to enable more distributed energy resources to utilize that those assets more on our grid?

 

Guillaume Paradis  35:28

Yeah, so that's core to the evolution and we're proposing and working toward and and really, if you boil it down to, you know, simple kind of concept, it's really that traditionally, we've had a static model of how our grid needs to operate, and we planned accordingly. So, you know, power flows in one direction to certain size customers. They use electricity to use our energy, and then we protect, we coordinate, we control accordingly, and we're moving into an environment where customer behavior evolves in a dynamic fashion in near real time, depending on what prices are available in the electricity market, depending on what aspirations various Customers have, depending on what technology they want to deploy to manage their energy footprint, a customer may look different, really, from one day to the next, as far as the electricity system is concerned, because their demand might be less significant on a day where their solar panels are better able to generate energy on a day where they choose to leverage a large battery system that they've installed at their facilities to manage their demand. And so from an electricity system standpoint, we need a much better awareness of what is happening in near real time to be able to control and then respond and ultimately offer the right service for our customers. So that's a big change again, going back to the how we're going to enable that. It's again, the core elements of communication infrastructure, more telemetry, so that we can see what's happening in real time. Think sensors. Think smart meters. Think, you know, software system within our control room to take all that information, information in in real time and make sense of it, and then ultimately drive our decision making and support our customers in leveraging energy resources in an optimal way for their needs, by making sure that we're aware of what's happening and not create barriers that are artificial because we're not Sure, and when we're not sure, safety is paramount, and when you prioritize safety and you don't have information, you have to be very conservative in the decisions you make, and you may limit customers choices and behavioral, you know choices, by having to have that safety margin and that safety conscience kind of override everything else. So better telemetry, better real time information, more dynamic ways of controlling energy allow us to enable customers and support their aspirations ultimately,

 

Trevor Freeman  38:38

I mean, it really comes kind of full circle back to our job is to let our customers do what they want to do when it comes to energy, enable that, and that may be just making sure the power is there and available, but it also may be making sure that our grid is set up to allow them to generate and store and sort of interact with energy in the way that they want to. So those two things are quite parallel. Okay, great. Last category here is grid resilience, and this is an important one, and especially in the eyes of our customers, because, you know, we're that unique industry where most of the time, people don't think of us when they really do think about us, it's because the lights have gone off, because there's some event that has resulted in an outage. And I just want to ensure our customers, we try very, very hard to make sure that doesn't happen as much as we can't control everything. So we have this category of grid resilience in our investment plan, and we know that we're going to be seeing and we have already started to see more frequent extreme weather events that is increasing. It's not going down. So what are we doing in our investment plan, or what are we planning to do in order to enhance grid resiliency and withstand those extreme weather event?

 

Guillaume Paradis  40:01

Yeah, so the need for resilience, in my mind, comes from a couple places. So, you know, there are drivers that are external, so the operating environment is evolving to your point. We've seen a number of very impactful weather events over the last few years, whether it be historically impactful ice storms, we've seen tornadoes in our service territory in a way that we didn't previously. We saw derecho a couple years ago, which was, you know, by some measure, the most impactful storm in the history of our company. And so, we know what we plan to withstand has evolved, and we need to reflect that in the decisions we make when we invest in our infrastructure. That can take a few forms, but for grid resilience, we're targeting specific investments so we can identify, and have identified areas of our system that are more vulnerable. Imagine overhead infrastructure that is more exposed to stronger winds. And so, we can go in there and then target those areas, target those segments of our system and make them more robust, more resistant to those external factors. And so, we have assessed our entire service territory. We've studied, you know, our vulnerability to changing patterns, to changing weather events, and in a very targeted manner, identified areas where we'll take action over the next five years to boost resilience of our electricity system in those scenarios, and really just generally. The other element is, you know, while those external factors are evolving and creating a stress on our system, we're also seeing people's dependence on electricity is availability continue to grow, right? So, you know, we've been through this many times at this point, and I'm sure it's been covered on on this podcast a number of times. But you know, people's, you know, need for highly and readily available electricity continues to go up. Think, you know, remote work. Think our utilization of, you know, the internet and the technologies that support that people need access to power, you know, on an ongoing basis for a variety of reasons that support their lifestyles. And so, while the external factors have become and are becoming more challenging and creating a stress, we're also seeing customers relying more heavily on our service being available, and so those things combined make it sort of an imperative that we take action and ensure that our system is robust and can withstand those conditions that are upon us. So, we change our planning approach. We evolve our choices with respect to investments. It could be simpler things than you know, targeting areas and replacing specific infrastructure. It could be as simple as changing our standards so that when we install a new poll, we know that it can withstand harsher winds and heavier ice loading parameters, and we do that across all our investments. So that's a key point here, with respect to grid resilience. Yes, we have a targeted, sort of very strategic approach to building resilience, but we also do that across all our investment categories when we put money in our distribution system to make sure that, similar to the point we made about technology, you know, we invest in assets that will, you know, outlive many of us, and they need to be adequate and appropriate for the environment in which they will operate long term. So we change, you know, the choices we make. We change the materials we use to build the infrastructure that we put in our system, so that ultimately the service levels and service quality that our customers get to enjoy, you know, meets their expectations for decades to come.

 

Trevor Freeman  44:47

I think the idea like it's good that we have called out specifically some activities targeted at group resilience, but some of the other stuff that we've already talked about all. Support resilience. And you mentioned in the grid modernization part, you know, part of that is restoring power to most customers quicker in our growth and electrification part, I mean making sure that our grid can handle the new loads also lends itself to resiliency. So, all of this is in service of making sure that power is there for our customers when they need it, how they need it, and done in a sort of safe and affordable way. That's the goal of all these categories together.

 

Guillaume Paradis  45:33

Yeah, absolutely the you know, going back to the earlier point, the categories are helpful in identifying the major drivers. But ultimately, to your point, Trevor, they all support each other, and when our team plans the future of electricity system, they do so in an integrated manner that considers the various benefits that we can achieve by taking action and putting more money in our distribution system?

 

Trevor Freeman  46:02

Yeah, great. So that's a nice segue into his next question, which is, of course, there's a cost for this, and this is why it is an investment plan. We're out there outlining, these are our targets. This is what we want to do, but there's a cost to that. And so if we don't do this. If we said, look, we just can't put that extra investment into these areas. What are the implications on the grid, on our service? And let's look at kind of like quality of service, reliability, safety, et cetera, if we don't make these investments that we are identifying right now.

 

Guillaume Paradis  46:41

Yeah, so it's pretty direct, right? We what we've done for the in preparation for our rate application, in preparation for to develop our plans for 2026 to 2030 is we've considered all the needs. We've looked at how old the assets are, how quickly they're deteriorating, how many might require replacement over the next five years. What would be an appropriate race rate of replacement to ensure that we don't let let risk build up in our system, we don't cause reliability issues. We've looked at making how we make sure that we can provide service to our customers, that we can connect them in a timely, timely manner, that we can do all those things in a fashion that is safe and ensures the safety of the public, our customers. And so a lot of thought goes into what is required over the next five years, and then on top of those factors and considerations, we also look at what impact will this have financially on our customers, because we're mindful that our service does affect, you know, our customers lives, yes, in a positive manner When our services reliable and power is available, but also financially from a cost standpoint, we add to other pressures that everyone experiences in their lives. And so we want to be very judicious in setting the size of our programs the level of investments in managing those various factors, right? So we have a multifaceted responsibility, and we weigh all those factors in in our or in setting the plans for the future. So doing so looking five years out, as you can probably imagine, you know, if we didn't constrain the plans. If we just did everything our planning engineers would like to do, we would have spent probably another 50% more than what is in the current plan. So looking at old assets, looking at the service levels we want to deliver, we could have spent a significantly larger amount of money if it was purely based on, we'll call them planning, you know, drivers. But as I said, we are mindful that we're responsible for the quality of our service on behalf of all our customers. And we took a very deliberate, you know, extensive approach to adjusting the program size to match the various considerations and ultimately manage the impact on our customers from a financial standpoint. And so we landed where we are after some measure of restraint, some measure of adjustments, down to the plans that would otherwise have been put in place. So thinking about what the outcomes would be if we didn't take the actions we're proposing. You know, it's pretty direct, if you think about it, and we've covered most of them, but it. Just from difficulties in connecting and delivering power to new customers in a timely manner, so that can have impacts with respect to economic development and growth of our community so fairly direct, and frankly, it's our obligation to connect. So we would do everything we can to provide power, but it might just be more difficult take more time on the reliability front. Again, what happens when you don't replace old assets is the failure risks continue to build in your system. So an 80 year old wood pole doesn't get any younger and does it get any stronger if you wait five, six more years? And so as I said, we do a risk assessment before we choose to invest, and our risk assessments tell us that we need to take action on those type of assets. And, you know, take action in a timely manner. If we don't, what is likely to happen is that in a storm scenario, those polls that are deteriorated are more likely to fail, even in normal conditions, it's likely that we would see more failures that could lead to reliability issues, and so just a direct impact on the quality of our service for customers with respect to other outcomes like enabling customers and supporting them in integrating more embedded energy resources. That might just become more difficult, as I said earlier, when we're don't have good real time awareness, we have to err on the side of caution and be more conservative in our management of the system, and that might mean restrictions on where and how we can integrate renewable energy resources. And then ultimately, you know, the paramount consideration for us is always safety, and that's an area where we would just have to be even more vigilant if we couldn't reinvest so old assets, you know, are inherently more likely to create failure risks, and failures can lead to undesirable outcomes from a safety standpoint. So we would have to, and already do, but be very vigilant in monitoring those assets, looking at them, looking at what we can do from a maintenance standpoint to ensure that they don't fail in a manner that would be problematic. So we would be, and are always, very active in looking at those riskier assets, those older assets, to make sure they don't cause problems. But reducing investment levels from what is being proposed now, reducing them further relative to, as I said, the planning levels we would have liked to put forward would have real consequences, and of course, we would do everything we can to manage those consequences and ensure that, you know, we continue to deliver the best service we can. But that would become more difficult than it is today.

 

Trevor Freeman  53:15

I appreciate that that context of you know, you like me, like energy, and we want to do all the cool things, and we want to have the system that is absolutely able to handle every eventuality, but we have to balance that with what is the right level of investment, what is the right pace to go at? And I think, you know, having seen the process, there's been a lot of work over the last year plus to find that balance, and I think we've, we've hit that balance in terms of being able to move the ball forward while trying to maintain that sort of affordability aspect for customers. Last question here to kind of wrap it all up, and we've touched on this a few times in some of the other questions, but how does our investment plan align with that broader energy transition that that we talk about? You know, decarbonizing, reducing emissions, increasing sort of customer flexibility when it comes to their own generation and storage. And what role do you see Hydro Ottawa playing moving forward in that? And I know that this has already gotten a little bit of attention, but I'll give you a chance just to kind of tie a nice little bow around it at the end.

 

Guillaume Paradis  54:39

Yeah. So to your point, we did cover a few elements, how we enable those you know, sustainability aspirations. But you know it ranges from making it possible for large customers to shift a significant portion of their energy demand to a lower. A carbon source like electricity. So again, think a customer who would use natural gas for their facilities, and you know, for corporate reasons, decides to use electricity instead us connecting that extra demand and delivering power to them allows them to lower their foot their carbon footprint. So that would be on high end in terms of size and impact, all the way to enabling customers to install different technologies on their homes, within their homes, to reduce their carbon footprint and change how they use energy. So it could be as simple as buying EV and making sure that power is available within that neighborhood to supply demand from that EV. It could be them installing solar panels on their roof and try to export power back to us. And so that would tie to the earlier point around visibility and real time awareness that we need to have to make sure that we can make that possible. So again, you know the energy system, the electricity system is integrated in so many ways, and enabling our customers to achieve their sustainability outcomes, their desired outcomes in terms of energy use, comes from planning the energy system, the electricity distribution system, in a manner that supports that and that permits it. So again, going back to some categories, the grid modernization that we spoke about earlier fits right in there. So being aware allows us to allow and enable customers, and that becomes critical again, in an environment where things are very dynamic, and we want to support that dynamism, and we need to do so in a manner that's safe. So we need information, and we need technology that allows us to go get that information to support the decision making. So as we said, all the investments we're proposing in one way or another will support our supporting those decarbonization and emission reduction objectives that we all have.

 

Trevor Freeman  57:26

Right, yeah, it really comes back to the idea of us being and this is something that I certainly talk to our customers about. A lot of us being partners with our customers when it comes to their energy journeys, and that can be very active partners in the sense of the word, where we are involved in helping make decisions together on technology or strategies, or it can be very passive in that kind of residential model that you talked about, of just making sure the grid can be there in the way that the customer wants it to be there, and that's still a partnership that that we need to lean into and that we are kind of through this investment plan.

 

Guillaume Paradis  58:07

We're essentially underpinning people's aspirations when it comes to energy, and so we're there to make it possible for them to do what they're hoping to do. And you're absolutely right. We're seeing both ends of those conversations where some you know, go about their own choices and really don't need us involved, and our responsibility there is to make sure that we don't create a roadblock by not being prepared and not being equipped to respond to you know how they want to change their behavior, all the way to that partnership, where it's a very involved conversation, we're being brought in to fully explore all the options and work with stakeholders in essentially demystifying, or maybe more specifically, sort of see through some of the complexity that exists today in an environment that is much more dynamic again and offers a lot more options than people would have seen a few decades ago.

 

Trevor Freeman  59:11

Fantastic. Well, Guillaume, I think we'll leave it there. This has been great, and I appreciate you taking the time to help pick apart you know what? What can be a pretty complex, lengthy plan, but really boils down to building out the grid, continuing to do the great work that that the folks at Hydro Ottawa do, while also preparing for the future. So I appreciate your insight into this. As our listeners know we always end these interviews with a series of questions, and you're no different. So I'm going to dive, dive right into that. So Guillaume, what is a book that you've read that you think everyone should read?

 

Guillaume Paradis  59:54

Yeah, so I'm probably going to get his name wrong, or at least the pronunciation, but it's a book called How The World Really Works by Vaclav Smil. Essentially, you know, he's a very pragmatic thinker with respect to how systems work, how our world is integrated, from a supply standpoint, from a geopolitical standpoint, and how that leads to outcomes in the real world. And think things like energy, think things like food supply. And what I like with his approach is that he breaks thing that things down, sort of from a first principle standpoint, to try to help explain why certain things may or may not be possible, and in an environment where, and maybe that's just my perspective, but I think today, there's a lot of big picture, you know, broad opinions being shared by people who may or may not always be very knowledgeable or have the expertise in certain fields. It's nice to see someone kind of break things down to then try to support, or in some cases, dispel certain misconceptions. So really nice approach. He has a number of books that are similar in nature, some cases a bit dense to read through, frankly, but I would say the how the world really works, book is easier to digest and it's it's a good entry into kind of his works and his approach to his studies. The other thing that's a plus maybe, is that he's based out of Winnipeg in Canadians, so it's great to have a mind like his, you know, contributing to the discourse in Canada.

 

Trevor Freeman  1:01:59

Awesome. So same question, but for a movie or a show, what's a movie or show that you think everyone should check out?

 

Guillaume Paradis  1:02:05

Yeah, that's a little harder. I think maybe I'll go to an old classic. For me. I'm always impressed with extreme creativity, I'll call it - in whatever forms. I think it's neat to see how people can envision a world - or create a world. And so an example for me was the Grand Budapest Hotel movie by Wes Anderson, so I think people are familiar with his work by now. I just like the combination of humor color, color like the creation of a world that doesn't quite exist but resembles one we might know. And just, you know, it's, it's a way of expressing oneself that is so interesting, so different. He does it really, really well. And, you know, I find it sort of like awe inspiring to go back to those kinds of movies and look at, certainly, there's all sorts of good content these days that's being produced, but I think this one is kind of withstood the test of time so far and kind of brings you to a different place. So I'll point to that.

 

Trevor Freeman  1:03:17

Yeah, it's one of those where it's not just about the story. Watching that movie is a bit of an experience. And all the ways that you just said, you know, there's like, an artificial aspect to it. There's that sort of mental, emotional side of it, and then there's the story itself, with the humor and everything. So yeah, that's a great one. I really like that.

 

Guillaume Paradis  1:03:35

Always fascinating to think someone was able to come up with that, right? Like that. Yeah, totally have all like, the attention to details, the way in which the storylines are integrated, the way in which the decors, the images are graphed like it's just remarkable. And, and I think in anything, it's really cool to see people who are sort of masters at their art, right? And whatever for and there's all sorts of other examples. But that one, you know, came to mind.

 

Trevor Freeman  1:04:09

Yeah, very cool. If you had a free round trip flight anywhere in the world, where would you go?

 

Guillaume Paradis  1:04:13

I think for me, it'd be somewhere very far north. I think it's on the list somewhere for the next few years, but just getting access to lands scenery that you wouldn't otherwise is really cool concept, maybe even spaces that are a bit less impacted by human you know, behavior and presence. So I just think a flight to somewhere random that maybe doesn't even have a name, but is in between two small villages that can only be accessed by a plane. I think that would be cool.

 

Trevor Freeman  1:04:58

Yeah, that does sound very cool. I like that. Who is someone that you admire?

 

Guillaume Paradis  1:05:03

Yeah, so my wife, for sure, I think that's sort of the foundation of a healthy relationship. You should have some admiration for your partner, and I absolutely do more generally. I would just point to anyone in our lives, and I think we all know people like that who spend a large amount of their time making other people's lives better. I could pick, you know, a celebrity of some kind, or politician of some kind, or even a historical figure, but, you know, I think in general, it doesn't have to be that complicated, people who just invest a lot of their time making sure others lives are better. I think that's something we should all admire, aspire to, you know, emulate, if we can, and just recognize as well. Because a lot of the times people do that, the people who do it well, don't do it for recognition. It doesn't mean they don't deserve it. And I think we should kind of try to promote it, you know, recognize it in our lives, and encourage it and emulate it, if we can.

 

Trevor Freeman  1:06:20

Fantastic. Well said. Last question, what is something about the energy sector or its future that you are particularly excited about?

 

Guillaume Paradis  1:06:25

Yeah, so I've been in the sector for about 20 years now, in fact, longer than that. My father worked for Hydro Quebec for many decades. So think we spent a lot of time talking about the future and getting excited about a future that was to come, and just the fact that we're living it now that we're actually shaping it, is pretty exciting, maybe even not appreciated to its full extent. And I think having a chance to contribute now is really awesome, and to whatever extent we can as well, I'm trying to encourage as many people as possible to join our sector, bring various backgrounds, you know, expertise, knowledge to helping us make decisions about how energy is going to be used in our society going forward, and how we can make the most this confluence of factors that create the window of opportunity to change things and make them evolve. And so for those of us who are part of it, let's not take it for granted, and let's make sure that we contribute to the full extent of our capabilities.

 

Trevor Freeman  1:07:45

Awesome, great, great way to wrap this up, I agree completely. Guillaume, thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it. And sharing your thoughts with us. Really appreciate you coming on the show.

 

Guillaume Paradis  1:07:56

Thanks. Trevor, pleasure.

 

Trevor Freeman  1:07:59

Great take care. Well, there you have it everybody that was our last episode of the season before our summer break. Our regular listeners will know that we typically take a break over the summer to regroup and work on content and plan out the next year. But don't worry, we will be still releasing episodes every two weeks. They will just be rewind episodes, and we'll take a look back at some of our favorite episodes or things that we feel are particularly relevant for what's going on right now. So keep tuning in and listen to those, and we will be back with brand new content in September. Take care and have a safe summer. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the thinkenergy podcast. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, and it would be great if you could leave us a review and review. It really helps to spread the word. As always, we would love to hear from you, whether it's feedback, comments or an idea for a show or a guest. You can always reach us at thinkenergy@hydroottawa.com.