Prevention of catastrophic events is not always feasible, but when it comes to energy and electrical resources, Gerry Cauley of Siemens Energy Business Advisory is busy developing ways to plan for better grid resilience and the ability to recover from such events.
In July of this year, Gerry Cauley participated in the first of six meetings with Hawai’i Electric and their stakeholders to develop resilience inputs to the planning of their future power grid. Gerry Cauley oversaw and facilitated exercises of six breakout teams focused on how to protect the Hawaiian electric grid from severe events such as hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, floods, and other severe disasters.
Hawaiian Electric Senior Vice President Colton Ching greeted the Resilience Working Group (“RWG”) members and provided an introductory background on resilience efforts by the Companies and across Hawai‘i. He described the Integrated Grid Planning (“IGP”) process and the vital role of the RWG to provide input on resilience, including threats and scenarios to be considered and mitigation actions. He emphasized Hawaii’s leadership in resilience and that both stakeholders in the RWG and the Companies will learn how to incorporate resilience into the IGP process best.
Gerry Cauley, along with another consultant from Siemens, presented background on resilience, including lessons learned from Superstorm Sandy in the northeast mainland and Hurricanes Maria and Irma in Puerto Rico. They explained the work Siemens has done to incorporate hurricane resilience into an integrated plan for the island as well as a conceptual definition of grid resilience and a framework for prioritizing critical customers and risk mitigation actions were presented for review.
During Gerry Cauley’s breakout exercise groups, he focused on the following considerations with stakeholders:
What threats should be considered and in what priority order?
What criteria should be used to prioritize customer segments concerning grid resilience needs?
What kinds of mitigating actions should be taken to address grid resilience needs? By Hawaiian Electric Companies? By customers/communities/others?
Gerry Cauley is a Principal Consultant in the Pace Global – Energy Business Advisory group within Siemens. Recently, he was named Head of Strategy and Planning Practice. His work is focused on the integration of emerging technologies, including renewables, distributed energy resources, and digital technologies. Advising energy companies on mitigation of extreme risk events, resilience, and cybersecurity, Mr. Cauley also provides expertise on emerging regulatory and compliance issues.
Siemens Energy Business Advisory partners with organizations to help them achieve energy transition and leverage the opportunities that digitalization provides. Their goal is to create sustainable value for businesses and society. Siemens Energy Business Advisory has a broad helps organizations overcome the challenges of integrating digitalization into their business strategy by determining infrastructure strategy to selecting future solution architecture.
