Co-op innovation: Meeting increased demand, minimizing disruptions, and mitigating risk

**SPEAKER_2** (0:05)
Welcome to the AiDASH Evolve 2024 podcast.
AiDASH makes critical infrastructure industries climate resilient and sustainable with satellites and AI. Evolve 2024 in New Orleans, Louisiana was our inaugural event. We gathered industry leaders, innovators and visionaries to explore how cutting edge technology and satellites and AI is safeguarding critical infrastructure and fostering biodiversity to ensure a sustainable future amidst climate change challenges. In this podcast series, we are recapping the entire event, every speaker and session. You can find it all on our content hub at ai-dot-com-slash-evolve2024 or check the show notes for all pertinent links. In this episode, you'll hear from a panel of co-op leaders talking about meeting increased demand, minimizing disruptions and mitigating risk. The panel, moderated by Gary Huntley, retired VP of Distribution Services, comprised, Jacob Barlow, VP of Engineering and Operations for Randolph EMC, Don Bowman, VP of Engineering and Operations and Assistant General Manager for Wake EMC, OJ Johnson, Construction and Right-of-Way Supervisor for Mitchell EMC, and Dragan Savic, Manager, Engineering, Technical Services for ENWIN Utilities. The panelists discussed how utilities need real-time data to help them deal with extreme weather events and how linemen have proven to be rapid technology adopters. They agreed that data-driven insights are essential for improving communication and transparency with co-op members, and that technology is critical for helping co-ops manage OPEC's in multiple areas like hardware life cycles and trim costs. Here's the panel led by Gary Huntley.

**Gary Huntley** (1:56)
I'm excited to do this today. You know, a lot of times we talk about things that really relate to investor-owned utilities. And sometimes, because co-ops are a little bit forgotten about this, and there's a lot of similarities, in this particular case, I think it's going to be interesting to talk to folks who are in that co-op space. And I think you can glean some insight from them on how they view innovation.
And so, today, we're going to talk a little bit about the increased demand. We're going to talk about how you minimize disruptions, the same thing that the other utilities have to deal with. But we also want to talk about this in light of the managing of climate risk. So with that, I'll go ahead and introduce, thank you for the introduction of me. And I'd like to just get through, go through the introduction for the others. So Jacob, we have Jacob Barlow here. He's the Vice President of Operations and Engineering at Randolph EMC. Anything else you want to add to that?

**Jacob Barlow** (2:52)
We're just in Central North Carolina. We serve about 32,000 members.

**Gary Huntley** (2:57)
Very good, thank you. We also have Don Bowman. Don is VP of Engineering and Operations, and he's also the Assistant General Manager at Wake EMC. Anything else to add?

**Don Bowman** (3:06)
Yeah, so we're just northeast of Raleigh. And you might remember there's a song called Wagon Wheel. And you're heading down south in the land of the pines. What they left out is that it's 100 to 120 foot pines and 30 foot right of way. So you know our challenges are all based around that.

**Gary Huntley** (3:25)
Very good, thank you so much. OJ, we have OJ Johnson. He's a Construction and Right of Way Supervisor at Mitchell EMC and has been a lineman, I learned, for many, many years. Anything else you want to add to that, OJ?

**OJ Johnson** (3:39)
I'm from Mitchell EMC which is a medium-sized co-op just northeast of Tallahassee. I'm one of those hard-headed linemen that were mentioned earlier. But I'm excited to be here and I appreciate y'all inviting me to do this.

**Gary Huntley** (3:55)
Thank you, OJ. And we also have Dragan Savic, the Manager, Engineering, and at ENWIN Utilities. And that's in Canada.

**Dragan Savic** (4:06)
Yes, Windsor, Ontario, Canada. We're right across from Detroit, Michigan. So yeah, we have about 90,000 customers. We're focused on the city of Windsor and that's our service territory. So excited to be here as well. Thank you.

**OJ Johnson** (4:18)
Very good.

**Gary Huntley** (4:19)
Thanks for having all of you here today. We'll just dive right on into it. So when we think about what we've seen in the news recently around hurricanes, and of course, we've heard a personal testimony about what's happened to Jamaica, but we've seen the devastation in Florida from two major storms. So in light of that, what have you learned in terms of how you prepare for storms and the way that you change your strategies and taking into account the intensity? And I'll just say, I was amazed when I watched these two storms come to Florida, how literally in a matter of 24 hours, one of them went from a tropical storm to a category five in 24 hours, which was just amazing to me. So when you think about just how quickly now due to climate change, things can really ramp up. These storms can grow in size. You're planning for that. How has that changed these recent experiences? How have they affected the way that you prepare for storms? We'll start with you, Jeff.