NARUC Annual Meeting
Steve Mitnick is President of Lines Up, Inc., Editor-in-Chief of Public Utilities Fortnightly, and author of “Lines Down: How We Pay, Use, Value Grid Electricity Amid the Storm.”
You had to be in San Antonio at NARUC's Annual Meeting. The PUF team was there too, asking the PUF Question of the Day, each day of the conference. And we handed out fun buttons to those gracious attendees who answered. Greg Bollom of Madison Gas and Electric must have wanted to collect them, because he answered PUF's Question of the Day on each of the three days!
On the closing day we asked, What was the most important thing said during this Annual Meeting?
Chair Jeffrey Ackermann, Colorado PUC
The most interesting thing I heard here is that many of the topics we're dealing with, such as the topic about environmental social governance [ESG] and how it relates to corporations, is so cross-cutting that we are no longer really able to work in silos. Although we discussed that at the energy resources and the environment committee, quickly that spills into many committees who are interested in topics like that. Similarly, we're learning about regulatory process, such as how to do better pilots, [which] is not unique to any one part of regulation. And that's the future. It's more integrated thinking.
Chair Brad Johnson, Montana PSC
The most interesting thing that I was involved in was NRRI's regulatory training initiative. Recognizing the fact that if we're going to break out of these old paradigms that have constrained us, which made perfect sense fifty and a hundred years ago, don't make sense today. If we're going to break out of those paradigms, we've got to start at the Commissioner level with training that recognizes that we have to take a different approach.
This also lays some important groundwork for outreach to the legislative sector where there's a desperate need for more effective communication between regulators and legislators. Again, twenty years ago it was a different world and we didn't have to have that effective communication on a regular basis. We do today, and so I am encouraged to see NRRI and NARUC creating some focus on filling that void.
Board Member Dick Lozier, Iowa Utilities Board
I don't know if it's the most important, but two interesting things that I learned yesterday in the "Who Wants to Be a Regulator" game was that NARUC was established in 1889, and that it was originally the National Association of Railroad Utility Commissioners.
Commissioner Mary-Anna Holden, New Jersey Board of Public Utilities
The most inspiring thing I heard was [new NARUC president] Brandon Presley's speech and the way he delivered it, of course, just almost off the cuff. But his concentration on the forgotten people in this country and the customer and I'm really excited to be looking to focus programming next year on that.
Greg Bollom, assistant vice president, Madison Gas and Electric
It's the whole discussion about resilience, that it's important to everybody, but everybody has a slightly different understanding of what that means. So, going forward, there's a general recognition, at least coming out of this program, that we all need to work better to come up with a common understanding of what that means and how we're going to address it going forward.
Jonathon Monken, senior director for system resilience and strategic coordination, PJM
The biggest thing is that the pace of change that's happening from a grid perspective, whether it's the generation mix, the increased penetration of renewables, new cybersecurity or physical security risks, that is dramatically outpacing the ability of regulators to encapsulate that in a coherent policy. And it's going to be this integrated approach that's essential to be able to make sure that we understand what the risks are on the industry side, but we're also communicating those risks in a way that's translatable into the right type of policy that can carry us forward.
PUF's Question of the Day articles
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