25 INSIGHT | Tracking the Future control and data acquisition (SCADA), everything is really reaching a critical mass. A lot is changing about how we deal with our customers. We’re trying to meet their expectations from a customer service perspective, but also from a reliability perspective, as we are typically about eight times more reliable than other utilities in the country. So we are looking for quality products that allow us to keep providing that reliability.” What are the biggest challenges being brought by energy transition? “I put climate change and green and clean energy at the front of all our challenges. We see a lot of electrification coming in the near future. We see this in transportation as well as heating. This transition is going to require an extensive growth of the electricity system, which will require a big effort both from the distribution side -- to distribute power to all these new type of consumers -- to the transmission side, finding new sources of energy. Energy is going to be produced in different parts of our system then it has before, such as the Atlantic Ocean. Currently there are plans to install up to 9,000-megawatt of offshore wind generation in the Atlantic Ocean off Long Island, just south of New York City. We also continue to see more large solar producers in upstate New York. The building out of the electric system will require products that comply with the need for high reliability such as materials that have long duration between mean time to failure, easy to install and overall low failure rates such as the ones that Prysmian Group provides on the medium voltage distribution splice, for example. We see cables and splices as an important part of the building out our system going forward. ConEdison has the largest underground distribution network of any utility right now in the US: 85% of our system is underground, serving 3.5 million customers. It just gives us the reliability that we spoke about. In the underground network system, the medium voltage splice is the weak link in the system and leads to the majority of our major events, typically on very hot and humid days in NYC.” Are there any specific innovations you are excited about? “Overall I think that electric utilities are behind the game. We continue to connect critical parts of our system together in the field withman-made splices. At these locations we connect machine made cable, that comes with high quality control and we then rely on people to connect these cables together, and in the end humans are humans. And this will create the weak link in the system. I compare us to the telecom industry, which operates a fibre optic network, and to the gas industry which now uses high density plastic for their pipelines. They both have well-trained employees using machines to join their cables or pipes together. The technology advancement especially in the area of robotics and machines has been significant. The electric utility companies need to think the same way and have highly precise machines making the splice location. These machines will be operated by highly trained field professionals, similar to how doctors use machines and robotics for surgery today. One day we will have a machine that makes the splices on our system and these locations will no longer be viewed as the weak link in the system. These splices will performmuch better than the ones that people presently make. It will also be safer, since currently the utility workers are required to touch copper wires that could inadvertently become energized at tens of thousands of volts.” What about sustainability? “We’re 100% behind that. We are investing about $700 million to add three underground transmission feeders to three different load pockets in our system to allow for the retirement of the peaking units in these areas. These peaking units will no longer be required to operate during peak summer days. That's an example of the greening of the grid and addressing climate change. We're also have significantly increased our spending in supporting customers in the energy efficiency space as well as incentivizing companies to install public electric vehicle charging stations by covering part of their costs to install these charging stations”. PRYSMIAN GROUP EDITORIAL STAFF 85% of system underground 3.5M user served
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