Industry Highlights

It goes without saying that emergency preparedness is my sweet spot, but a related topic is the notion of PR crisis planning.  Public relations has always been an important part of utility [...]

We don’t talk too much about hailstorm events on this blog, but perhaps we should – apparently hailstorms are the most expensive storm hazard for the insurance industry, with damages from a [...]

I’ve written about microgrids multiple times in the past, but now a new variation has been introduced – the nanogrid.  Both have similarities and differences, yet both can be used to provide a [...]

The number of U.S. residents that have spent time in emergency housing during the first 9 months of 2020 is greater than in any year since 2010.  And given that the western wildfire season [...]

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (PG&E) is pursuing an “islanding” strategy to help reduce the customer impact of its rolling / panned blackouts (purposeful shut downs of sections of the grid [...]

Rural coops, also known as rural electric cooperatives or power cooperatives, sometimes get a bad rap.  But this is objectively unfair, as they tend to have fewer resources compared to large [...]

Developing offshore wind projects is not California’s priority right now, but perhaps it should be, because this could potentially help ease some of the challenges that the state is currently [...]

I just read a fantastic article about the benefits of using adaptive SOPs (standard operating procedures), instead of predictive SOPs, during emergency situations.  Adaptive SOPs, as you can [...]

Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) just launched a new online tool to help customers track rotating power outages and planned blackouts that are triggered by heatwave activity.  It’s a [...]

The 1918 pandemic was absolutely horrific, leading to more deaths than the first two world wars combined.  It was an influenza outbreak that may have originated right here in the U.S., and there [...]