California’s Massive Grid Build Ahead

One of the largest investor-owned utilities in the country is
preparing for an 80% increase in electricity demand by 2045. In
this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Steve
Powell who is the president and CEO of Southern California
Edison.


With a customer base of 15 million people across a 50,000 square
mile service area, Southern California Edison is changing the way
it prepares for the increased demand.


“Our engineers that are frankly used to dealing with relatively
small changes on the grid and small amounts of load growth and
really focus on just making sure that the infrastructure stays
reliable are now having to think very differently about how we
plan for customer load growth and load growth is showing up
really quickly,” said Powell.


Meeting the demand for carbon free electricity means more
generation from wind and solar and other sources like nuclear and
geothermal. It also means more transmission to get electricity to
customers.


“You look at the California Independent System Operator's 20-year
outlook and they're talking about 50 plus billion dollars of new
transmission that needs to get built. We're going to need to
build transmission miles at four times the pace that we've seen
historically.”


Powell admits 20 years is a short timeframe, and the industry
needs to move faster. 


“About 20% of the energy that customers use is electricity. By
the time you get to 2045, I would expect 50 to 60% of it to be
electricity based. So, customers are going to be two to three
times more dependent on electricity than they are today. That
means our level of service has to be better. Reliability is going
to have to be better.”


Steven Powell is president and chief executive officer of
Southern California Edison. Powell has held a variety of
positions of progressing responsibility since joining the company
in 2000, including executive vice president, Operations and
senior vice president of Strategy, Planning, and Operational
Performance.  


He has a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the
University of California, Los Angeles and received his MBA from
UCLA Anderson School of Management. He has also held leadership
positions in resource planning and strategy, gas and power
procurement, and SCE’s plug-in electric vehicle readiness
efforts.