Sean Peterson, Technology Strategy & Planning, Energy & Utilities (California)
What do you actually do all day?
My day to day role is on the technology strategy and planning team at a large northern California utility. We evaluate different technologies and help with the planning for funding of projects. This includes smart grid and clean technologies, but we manage the entire range of technology used by the business. We have a five-year roadmap which aligns our technology investments with our corporate strategies, which was a challenge to develop because there are a lot of potentially great technologies available but we have time and budget constraints just like any other department.
Many of the people I work with are engineers. I’ve been working hard to learn a lot of the engineering aspects of the business, but my role is to translate these technical components into language that can be used by our executives for business cases or communications. My background is in economics and environmental studies, which has really helped me with my ability to articulate the value of a project and to tell the bigger story of why these technology investments are beneficial.
We also support regulatory work on the general rate case (GRC). That means we are involved in creating the business case for the investments we want to make to our grid. We call out the ties to how investments in grid management technology will impact the environment.
For some context on challenges faced by the utility industry – the grid was initially built for power to flow in only one direction. Now with solar, wind, and other technologies (distributed resources) you have power coming in to the grid from multiple sources, so utilities have to figure out which technologies to invest in to enable these new distributed resources.
In California, we have a program for demonstration projects, that allows us to pilot new and innovative ideas – it’s called the Electric Program Investment Charge (EPIC). For example, one of the technologies that is being demonstrated through this program is aimed at optimizing new distributed resources – there is a technology called the Distributed Energy Resource Management System (DERMS). This technology aims to help coordinate the control of various types of distributed resources, such as solar and energy storage. Testing new methods to control and optimize these resources will be an enabling factor in achieving California’s Renewable Portfolio Standard. It’s really cool stuff.
It will be important to ensure that utilities remain a viable resource in a future where most of our energy comes from distributed resources. Part of that is envisioning the grid as a platform for new products and services for our customers. For example, in the future, you could potentially generate energy from your own solar panels and then sell that energy to your neighbor – it’s a theory called ‘transactive energy.’ It’s up to utilities to ensure that the grid is prepared to support that kind of transaction. It’s interesting being able to think about solving the highly complex challenge of getting energy from one spot to another.
What are some of the key skills for success in this role?
The most important skills to have when working for a large utility is the ability to connect the dots. For example, where I work there are employees with over 30 years of utility experience and you need to be able to access their knowledge and incorporate it with regulatory, financial, engineering, and economics data to tell the whole story about a potential investment. It’s impossible to have all of that expertise yourself, you need to rely on people who understand the space and be able to learn from them.
What is your favorite part of your job?
I love learning more about the big picture of energy and how it impacts the environment. Prior to this role I was in business consulting, I had been exposed to energy markets and the broader energy space but I had never been able to do such a deep dive on specific energy issues as I can now. I really enjoy being able to learn from everyone I work with.
What is the hardest part of your job?
In the utility space in general there’s a lot of red tape. The investments that you’re making aren’t using private funding, they’re using customer money collected from customers, so everything is very highly regulated. If not addressed proactively, this has the potential to slow innovation down a bit and can create extra processes to prove that what you want to do is worthwhile.
What is your proudest professional achievement?
When I first graduated from college I really struggled to understand how to forge a career in the energy and environmental space, I wasn’t sure what direction that would take. I had been thinking that my career would be working for an advocacy group or a nonprofit, but my first job changed all that. My first job was as an intern in the White House Council on Environmental Quality – a division that advised President Obama on environmental issues and developed frameworks for how federal agencies should approach sustainability issues. The experience really showed me how much of an impact energy has on the environment; it highlighted the fact that energy is multifaceted – it has technology, environmental, and business components, and it’s ultimately the projects that are win/win in all three of those areas that get completed. I’m really proud that I was able to really learn from that experience and use it to turn my career in the direction that brought me to my current role.
What are the game changers in your world?
Energy storage. I think that will have a significant impact on how utilities operate and coordinate energy flows between customers. If customers could buy and store their own energy, eventually people could bypass the utility completely and sell energy directly to their neighbor. That really changes the role of the utility – if we’re not producing the energy itself, then the grid becomes almost like a big battery allowing people to share their energy with others.
What was your path to this role?
I wasn’t focused on the environment prior to college. I attended UC Santa Barbara’s Bren School and majored in economics but took an Introduction to Environmental Issues class with Professor Freudenburg. He was such an incredible teacher he got a standing ovation after every class. It made me see this line of work as a way to make a real impact on the world so I added a second major in Environmental Studies. Around that time, I also read a book called Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Thomas Friedman. It helped me see that we have some real issues with climate change, population growth, and resource constraints.
After my internship with the White House Council on Environmental Quality I interviewed for a role on ICF’s Climate Change team but they ultimately didn’t hire for that position; however, I ended up getting a position on ICF’s Energy Business Development team. One of the forward-thinking projects ICF was involved with at the time was performing renewable resources assessments for utilities. The team I worked with at ICF also focused on renewable resource integration and energy efficiency. I was with ICF for three years when I had the opportunity to join a major utility and jumped at the chance to get direct industry experience and further my understanding of the energy space.
What’s your advice to someone interested in a role like this?
Be open to opportunities that you might not originally think of. When I was in college I wouldn’t have thought I’d wind up at a utility, I had thought I’d be in policy or at a nonprofit or working in the developing world. Working in the White House Council on Environmental Quality really opened my eyes to what opportunities are out there for making an impact with the skills that I have. Having an impact at a big company can have a huge impact due to the scale. Be open to the new possibilities and tracks that may help you make a better impact than your initial plan.
What are your favorite resources?
Greentechmedia.com, utilitydive.com, UC Berkeley has a lot of great energy resources at Haas through the Energy Institute.
There’s a really great group called the Young Professionals in Energy, they’re nationwide and it’s a really great group to broaden your horizons and get exposure to working in different areas of energy and sustainability.
Distributech is a great conference for learning about all the cutting-edge technologies around grid functions.
Who (or what) is your sustainability hero?
Professor Freudenburg at UC Santa Barbara. He had this theory called double diversion. Large companies sometimes divert your attention from the big picture. One company might have a lot of pollution from production of their actual product such as laundry detergent, but they’ll talk a lot about how green their bottles made of recycled plastic are. They also try to get you to focus on the end result. For example, ethanol-based biofuels produce lower emissions when burned, but the energy creation behind their production is huge, so it’s not as clean as it seems. He taught us to not just take things for what you see on the surface and that there are a number of ways to manipulate data optics. We need to understand the full life cycle from production to consumer in order to get the full story.
