A Closer look at the Factors

Hello Class! Welcome to our discussion today! Today we’re interviewing a good friend and colleague of mine, Bob Barcanic.  And Bob will share some of his experiences to help add some context for what we’ve been discussing in this lesson. And in this lesson we introduced a concept of energy accessibility, reliability, security, and sustainability. And we will be visiting these attributes throughout the semester from different perspectives. But we thought it would be a good start to have some real-life perspectives and I can’t think of anybody better to do that than Bob. So let’s go ahead and get started.

Again, Bob, welcome! And thank you for joining us. And, we’d like you to comment about your experiences on each of these attributes. But first please take a few minutes to introduce yourself including specifically about your energy-related background.

Well, thank you Ed. Like Ed said, my name is Bob Barkanic. And I am a consulting engineer. I have been in the energy industry for over 40 years. I’ve worked in the nuclear energy field. I’ve worked in government on energy programs. I have worked for a large Fortune 500 power company. I’ve taught, in fact, I’ve taught this very class at the Penn State World Campus. And, my present position is as an energy consultant. I am a professional engineer in Pennsylvania, and I have both my bachelors and masters in engineering science from Penn State University.

Excellent, excellent! And again, Bob’s being a little bit modest. He’s had a very distinguished career. He’s worked on Three Mile Island. He’s worked with the governor of Pennsylvania in the Department of Environmental Resources. And I’ve had the honor and privilege of working with Bob and for Bob several times throughout our respective careers. So, let’s jump right into discussion about these attributes, and we’ll start with reliability. We all want our energy supply to be reliable. So, from your experiences, can you tell us your thoughts on this concept of energy reliability?

Yeah, so the first topic being reliability is appropriate because it is one of the most important parameters that utility executives face. But, what is reliability? Reliability is simply keeping the lights on, or keeping the gas flowing, regardless of what’s going on out in the world. That could be storms. That could be cyber-security. That could be accidents. That could be equipment failure. So, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, which is the entity that regulates utilities in Pennsylvania, measures the frequency, and the duration, and the restart time of those outages. The PUC determines how much money a utility can make in a given year based on that performance. And with the expanding distribution, new devices coming online such as smart grid devices, the increasing frequency and severity of storms, ensuring reliability for customers is a constant source of frustration for utility executives.

Excellent point, thank you! So let’s transition a bit. In this day and age, threats to, natural or intentional, do pose a risk to our power system. And also we have the issues of energy independence vs relying on another region for supply, and this could be a concern as well. So, with those concepts in mind, what are your thoughts on this issue of energy security?

Energy security in the electric utility industry has always been a priority. But the challenges today are even more confounding than they have been in the past. In the past you could “harden” your systems. You can harden them with structural barriers that could withstand an accident like a truck driving into a transformer station. Today, with everything being digital there’s an almost overwhelming number of hackers out there who for whatever reason are trying to get in and manipulate the electric grid, and that’s just on the electricity side. On the fuel side, there’s also geo-political issues. In September of 2019, there was a drone attack on one of the Saudi Iran Co oil refineries that disrupted one-half of the Saudi’s oil refining capabilities, and that was five percent of the global demand. So, the geopolitical issue from a drone attack, thankfully we and the Saudi’s had reserves so there was hardly any impact to our economy.

So, we’ve talked about the importance of the energy supply as reliable and secure. But another aspect is this issue of accessibility. And part of that includes affordability. So with your diverse background in this space, what are your views on this issue of accessibility and affordability?

I think accessibility on the electricity utility side in developed countries like the United States, for the most part, is not a significant issue. Affordability for that electricity is a completely different matter and there are programs built into government agencies that help people who are having trouble with their electric utility bills. I don’t, so I don’t see accessibility on the electricity side as a big issue in developed countries. On the natural gas side, the same cannot be said. Here in Pennsylvania, where we have an abundance of natural gas, marcel shale gas, one of the biggest challenges that the industry has is to get that gas to market, to customers, and to residents. Electricity in the developed world is a completely different matter as well. In the developing world, the solution might be to jump over a hundred years worth of technology and development that we’ve had in developed countries. Building our infrastructure out, and go directly to distributed generation. If you imagine bringing solar energy to a community or in a rural community in a developing country and the impact that that could have on their quality of life, not to mention their access to healthcare information, or communications, or commerce. That would be astounding. Getting natural gas in those areas could be a little bit more challenging.

So the new player on the scene is this issue of sustainability and sustainable energy. There’s a lot of talk of having more renewables in the mix. Just making our overall energy supply and energy system more sustainable. So, what are your views on this whole issue of energy sustainability?

Yes, so sustainability in energy and energy sustainability is the biggest issue of them all, right? It’s tied to climate change and you’ll be learning a lot about climate change in this class and in other classes at Penn State. It is, I think, the most challenging issue that we face. And as with accessibility, sustainability may actually be easier in the developing world than in the developed world. But still very challenging. In the developing world though, especially in rural places where infrastructure doesn’t exist, you could see how that distributed generation could be built much more easily than it could be in the developed world, because in the developed world we have enormous build-out of energy infrastructure. In the developed world, renewables must compete with existing energy resources. You don’t have that in the developing world. And with our 24 hour a day/365 days a year economy, intermittency of renewable resources is an issue that we have to contend with. And batteries may ultimately solve that but imagine the amount of infrastructure that’s necessary in the United States to replace the entire fossil fuel fleet of vehicles with electric vehicles. It’s a staggering amount. But that’s where we need to go. And additionally, in the developed world political infrastructure exists, and it’s robust. The political infrastructure is robust. But those communities, those companies that are tied to existing infrastructure, they have a right to ensure the status quo on that and they’re going to fight hard to do. So, I see that as perhaps political, overcoming the political infrastructure, is one of the most difficult challenges that we face.

Wonderful, thank you so much for that insight. That real-life insight on these four attributes is incredibly useful to the class. So, to wrap up, what are your thoughts on how these all integrate together? How do you deal with these competing priorities going forward?

So, we talked about many of the things that you’ll be talking about in the class, smart grid, distributed generation, renewable energy, electric vehicles, batteries. I would just ask you to remember the differences between the gas and electric industry that developed differently. So there are different challenges in each of those. And I would also remind you that there are different challenges in differences between the developed countries and the developing countries. And, finally I would just hope that you enjoy digging deeper into those issues as I have.

Wonderful, thank you! And I suspect this was very insightful. We appreciate you taking the time to chat with the class and hopefully we can have you come back later in the semester on some other issues. So, on that note, thank you. And thank you class, for joining us today for this.