Talking Congress, security and generation at EEI

By Jennifer Van Burkleo,
Associate Editor

At the EEI Annual Convention this week, I caught up with former EEI Chairman Tom Farrell and Lew Hay, the new EEI chairman and CEO of NextEra Energy, to talk about what conventioneers were talking about in Orlando this year. I was glad to be inside, given how hot and rainy it was most of the time.

At the convention, held at the Marriott, my editor in chief Teresa Hansen and I were able to meet with both the incoming and outgoing chairmen. Hay said that although he is the incoming chairman, he will work closely with Farrell on industry priorities like cyber security, distributed generation, workforce issues and the direction of EEI.

Utilities compete in many ways, but they also pull together and work together for mutual advantage, Hay said. He also credited Farrell for helping build a consensus among EEI's member utilities.

As we sat down, the two men tackled the topic of cyber security. Hay and Farrell agreed that EEI would support a legislative solution in Congress to help private industry and the government share information on cyber threats. Such a bill is making its way through Congress, having earned approval in the House of Representatives in April and now awaiting a vote in the Senate.

The bill was introduced by Rep. Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican, who heads the House Intelligence Committee. The Obama administration threatened to veto the bill, claiming that the country's critical infrastructure would not be adequately protected by the legislation. The administration also expressed doubts about the level of protection the bill offered for consumer privacy.

"I think my company's system gets attacked more than a million times a day, but most aren't robust and we detect them," said Hay as he ate a giant cookie, provided at the meeting.

Hay and Farrell agreed that the government and Congress should let utilities share information to better protect their customers.

"The government clearly has information (about threats) that they aren't sharing with us," Hay said. "It will take an act of Congress to work these issues out."

When we asked about the future of distributed generation, Farrell stated that it will grow in a variety of forms, many that are still unknown. Utilities should be sure that they have in place a fair way to distribute the cost of upgrading the distribution grid to accommodate distributed generation now rather than when it might be too late in the future, Farrell said.

EEI's outgoing president Thomas Kuhn, who stepped into our meeting later on, used Germany's current cost problem as an example of why the U.S. should prepare for the future now. Because Germany waited too long to deal with the issue of electric costs, utility prices are now double those seen in the U.S.

According to Hay, utilities need to communicate the value of electricity to their customers. They need to find a way to communicate what is driving utility bills.

As technology changes, so do employees and their skills. Companies need to update their training materials by including more detail to what the position is, Hay said. Utilities shouldn't assume that potential employees know what the position description is.

Hay also suggested that companies look toward military personnel and veterans to fill their open positions, adding that troops are much better trained than they were 20 years ago.

Farrell has been chairman, president and CEO of Dominion since 2007. Hay is CEO and chairman of NextEra Energy. Hay's last day as CEO will be July 1, 2012, where he will then take over as executive chairman of NextEra through 2013.