“EPAC’s philosophy is that the industry can and must work together to proactively and voluntarily advance its own standards, rather than waiting for mandates to be imposed.”

“In the coming year, we will provide opportunities to follow and contribute to the global dialogue on critical issues shaping the clean energy future. Through participating in EEI’s Global Electrification Forum in April and signing up for the EEI International Engagement Hub, stakeholders can engage directly with our programs – which all are aligned with our commitment to share knowledge through Power by Association.”

“The main thing we want folks to know is that there are practical pathways, and they can look at this within their area of interest and start to understand how some of these solutions might fit for them.”

“We are announcing our 5x25 initiative, which will be rolled out in early 2024, focusing on five areas where our industry will need to find practicable solutions for over the next two years to ensure we meet our carbon reduction goals.”

“ISO New England is the regional planner, and we work closely. They’ve identified in 2050 that they expect the winter peak in New England to double. What that means for VELCO and many other transmission owners in New England is line upgrades.”

“We have improved the reliability of the system by 35% in the first two years of operations. It’s quite a record in the U.S. for any utility. It would be hard to find any that have improved by 35% in two years in frequency of outages, and 20% of duration of outages in comparison to the previous year.”

The 2023 Conference on Innovative Smart Grid Technologies - Latin America, sponsored by IEEE Power & Energy Society, focused on the theme of disaster recovery and network transformation in times of climate change. Puerto Rico’s unique experience with disaster preparedness and recovery in the wake of Hurricanes Irma and Maria was a notable topic of discussion for the convening engineering and climate change experts.

NARUC held its Annual Meeting and Education Conference in November, closing out its three years of the theme “Connecting the Dots, Innovative/Disruptive Technology and Regulation.”

“Reliability and affordability will be center stage this next year, and I have encouraged committee chairs to address these issues in meetings. I look forward to healthy debates about different approaches to decarbonization, new methods for resource planning, permitting, and construction challenges, workforce shortages or proposed EPA regulations.”