Industry Highlights

A nasty storm in January 2018 caused massive mudslides in Montecito, CA, a community of about 9,000 residents within Santa Barbara County.  At least 20 residents were killed.  The totality of the [...]

I’ve written about many kinds of natural and manmade disasters for this blog, including system-hacking, terrorism, forest fires, earthquakes, and more. Now there’s a new and emerging [...]

Since there’s been so much talk about emergency cellphone alerts lately, this NY Times article is interesting.  In South Korea, notifications from local and regional governments are [...]

At first blush, the notion of outage planning seems counterintuitive.  This is because unplanned outages get all the press.  Case in point – most of what I write about involves unplanned outage [...]

Are underground power lines the solution for preventing forest fires?  According to Councilman Bob Whalen of Laguna Beach, CA, the answer is a definitive “yes.” Mr. Whalen’s sentiment is [...]

In this brave new world of cyber hacking, terrorism, and similar shenanigans, utilities face great challenges when it comes to protecting critical infrastructure.  And one of the newest methods [...]

Natural gas emergencies can hinder emergency response efforts for utility companies in any sector – electric, water and gas.  Why?  Because natural gas emergencies are safety hazards, plain and [...]

According to a State task force, the New Jersey water infrastructure is in dire condition and requires immediate legislative intervention.  Apparently urgent upgrades are needed because much of [...]

Change is accelerating within all utility sectors, especially within the electric industry, and the Three Ds represent the driving forces of this change – decarbonization, digitization and [...]

Weather-related emergencies in the utility industry are a fact of life, and the perception of utility response to these emergencies can be enhanced by positive local news coverage.  It does not [...]