WREN represented at Avista Community Academy
Sue Lani Madsen - October 7, 2024
Last week the “N” in the WREN took the lead with an opportunity to Network with leaders from eastern Washington, Idaho and Montana. It was the annual Avista Community Academy, part of their outreach to communities and the customers they serve.
More than a simple public relations event, I ended up with 17 pages of notes on everything from power production and safety to dispatching and grid reliability. Challenges to overcome for all energy utilities will include strengthening the grid infrastructure, better integration of intermittent renewable sources into the grid, resiliency across seasons and when faced with extreme weather conditions, wildfire risk management, lagging battery technology, and building trust with communities.
Avista has survived for over 135 years by being responsive to community needs. They’ve learned – sometimes the hard way - the value of avoiding or mitigating the impact of unintended consequences by listening to feedback. Hearing directly from communities is as just as critical to providing a safe, reliable, resilient and clean power system as good engineering and balanced financial spreadsheets.
The Avista leadership team recently had to implement their first Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) when the temperature, winds and humidity indicated a critical situation in the Indian Trail neighborhood in Spokane. Feedback is still coming in, and some came from the group at the Academy.
It was clear it had not been an easy call for a company that prides itself on keeping the power on. We had the opportunity to see how the weather data came in, discuss how the decision was made and how they mitigated consequences for the general public. Last month it was a mostly residential city neighborhood, and the Avista team felt it had gone pretty well. By all news accounts it certainly had.
Then a state representative from Montana who owns grocery stores described his concern about the financial impact of losing refrigeration for small businesses that rarely have generators. Lincoln County Commissioner Jo Gilchrist pointed out cutting power in a rural area means cutting off water supplied by wells, essential for firefighting. I asked if the detailed hazard data they develop on areas that might be deemed critical but not quite critical enough to trigger a PSPS could be shared with rural sheriffs and fire districts. Rural areas are served by volunteers on call from home or work, and the extra notice to have a first response crew on standby at a typically unmanned station would support a more rapid response.
The Avista team listened. Feedback from the Academy participants will undoubtedly go back into PSPS planning for next wildfire season.
And the WREN will have ongoing opportunities to provide a voice in the conversation after being invited to join the Equity Advisory Group as a voice for rural concerns.
The Academy culminated in a tabletop exercise in public power planning to meet the public need for reliable, affordable, safe and clean energy, working towards public policy goals for decarbonization of the electrical grid. Teams competed to find the best balance of power production meeting peak loads with the cleanest possible mix at the lowest possible cost.
