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Episode #103: 'Unleashing The Power Of Integrated Data' With Damian Sciano And Leon Bukhman, Con Edison [an Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast]

Recent advancements and modernizations in the utility industry have hinged on the availability of data. Data from across the grid can come in massive quantities, in real time, and require immense plans and assets necessary to analyze and make the best use of it. But those efforts are undoubtedly worthwhile, as they bring about new operational efficiencies, improve options to boost reliability, and more.

 

 

However, just because the world of utility data is valuable does not mean it is easy. Entire departments of the utility industry need to be reworked to think about what data can do for them and how to best utilize the data coming in. Even policymakers and regulators are getting involved in the process, such as the landmark New York statewide energy data integration project. To understand exactly what this entails and how it's preparing New York utilities for the future, this week's episode features two key utility professionals at the frontline of these efforts: Damian Sciano, Director of Distributed Resource Integration, and Leon Bukhman, Project Manager, both from Con Edison. Listen in as Damian and Leon walk podcast host Jason Price and producer Matt Chester step by step through this process.

Prefer to Read vs. Listening? Scroll Down to Read Transcript.

Thanks to the sponsor of this episode of the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast: West Monroe.  

Key Links

Damian Sciano's Energy Central Profile: energycentral.com/member/profile/damian-sciano

Leon Bukhman's Energy Central Profile: energycentral.com/member/profile/leon-bukhman

Did you know? The Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast has been identified as one of the industry's 'Top 25 Energy Podcasts': https://blog.feedspot.com/energy_podcasts/

 

TRANSCRIPT

Jason Price: 

Welcome to the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast. This is a show that brings leading minds from the energy industry to discuss the challenges and trends that are transforming and modernizing our energy system. And a quick thank you to West Monroe, our sponsor of today's show. Now, let's talk energy.

I'm Jason Price, Energy Central Podcast host and director with West Monroe, coming to you from New York City. And with me, as always, from Orlando, Florida, is Energy Central producer and community manager, Matt Chester. Matt, we love bringing guests onto the podcast who are on the front lines of advancements, innovations, and evolutions in the utility sector. This is a podcast for the utility professional, and it always seems the best people to reach that audience is by speaking to their peers, leaders who are working at utilities today, to advance the industry, offering their lessons learned, and ensuring listeners can benefit from their insights. And today, we actually have the benefit of featuring a record fourth episode with guests from one of the highest profile utilities in the country. I'm speaking, of course, of my hometown utility, that serves me every day in New York City. And that's Con Edison. Matt, summarize for our audience the great conversations we've previously had on our show with thought leaders from Con Edison.

 

Matt Chester: 

Yeah, I'd be happy to, Jason. Back in June, 2021, in episode 42 of the podcast, we met Nelson Yip, the director of strategic planning at Con Edison, who discussed the importance of planning for and adapting to the climate realities from the utility perspective. And then, later that same year, we had a special episode where Paul Dakotas from West Monroe brought in his utility partner, Mike Murphy, of Con Edison, so they can discuss the work they did together embarking on the utility's data and digital journey. And lastly, we heard earlier this year from King Look, the director of R&D at Con Edison, who highlighted where some utilities may be falling short in their investments in R&D and how instead Con Edison is leading the way to buck that trend. So today's guests, they're surely in good company and joining their fellow company colleagues on the Energy Central Power Perspectives podcast.

 

 

Jason Price: 

That's great, Matt. Thank you. And of course, again, you can find each of those four episodes on Power Perspectives. And it gives me great pride once again to feature the great work being done at Con Edison. And as you noted in today's conversation, we're going to be focusing on the digitalization and data operations driven by the requirements handed down from the New York State Public Service Commission. But I'll let our guests give the background on these requirements and the subsequent efforts. So first, I'd like to welcome to the podcast Damian Sciano, director of Distributed Resource Integration. Damian has been with Con Edison for over three decades and is breaking new ground with the New York statewide energy data integration project. Damian, thank you for joining us today.

 

Damian Sciano: 

Thank you, Jason. It's a pleasure to be here.

 

 

Jason Price: 

And Damian didn't come alone, as we're also joined by his colleague, Leon Bukhman, project manager at Con Edison, who is leading efforts with the energy data integration endeavor. Leon, thanks for being here.

 

Leon Bukhman: 

Oh, great to be here, Jason. Thank you for having us.

 

Jason Price:

So let's start with the basics. Damian, can you give our listeners an overview on what New York officials are looking to do with this data integration project, referred to as IEDR, or Integrated Energy Data Resource? Who are the relevant stakeholders? And what exactly is the goal?

 

Damian Sciano: 

Sure. Jason, I can sum it up in a word. That word is "green." And the stakeholders are everybody. If you want a sentence, we're trying to leverage data to inform customers and others to make clean green energy choices. We want to use that data to quantify progress, so that we can continually adapt our policies and help New York State meet their ambitious clean energy goals. And those goals, I think they're pretty much well known. They're nation leading. We're looking to go to 70% electric generation from renewables by 2030, 100% by 2040, and 85% economy-wide decarbonization by 2050. So that includes boilers and heating equipment, as well as the transportation industry and electric vehicles in particular. And quite frankly, I think that the commission got it right. Data's going to be key. I'll start out by kind of giving Con Ed a plug and our colleagues over at O&R, our sister utility, we're passionate about data. And it's already in our DNA.

We have tens of thousands of SCADA points out there. We do very deep analytics, and we've been doing this for decades, to help improve reliability and response on our system. And now, with our AMI rollout, which is our advanced metering infrastructure, we're expanding that tens of thousands of points to millions of points to the customer's meter to keep driving improvements in those traditional areas that I mentioned and to start making big strides in the green energy marketplace and letting customers know what they can do with that data. So super excited about that. And New York state kind of shares that vision. How do we take energy data and put it in a place that's easy for customers to get and help green the economy? So the Public Service Commission issued two orders around data, the Integrated Energy Data Resource, that you mentioned, which is going to be that central repository for data.

And then, second order and complementary order was the Data Access Framework. And as the name implies, the Public Service Commission recognized the need to control the data and protect it and ensure privacy and cybersecurity. So they, being the Public Service Commission, designated that NYSERDA would actually run and operate the Integrated Energy Data Resource. This effort's already well under a year of experience. So NYSERDA's brought together a whole advisory team, including the joint utilities, including DER providers, including government officials, et cetera, and so on, to kind of start figuring out what use cases to focus on and how to get that data as soon as possible. And if you think about it, right, it's the beauty of bringing all of these different minds and diverse experiences bear on this very big and important problem. So as I said at the beginning, in this scenario, everybody is a stakeholder. Customers, first and foremost, because they're looking at all these cool emerging technologies, DER providers, policy makers, the utilities themselves, universities and research departments, et cetera, and so on. So that's just the start of the list and something we're very excited about.

 

Jason Price: 

So that's a lot of data collection. Leon, I want to go over to you. What kind of data are you capturing? Why exactly is that an immense project? And aren't utilities regularly collecting that data anyways?

 

Leon Bukhman: 

We're collecting all kinds of data. There's customer data, energy use and billing, then we have system data for modeling and telemetry. And we even have non-utility data, like customer demographics and land use, that the IEDR team would be sourcing separately. And some of the data is geospatial, like our hosting capacity maps. Some of it is time series data, like the MI readings. And the rest is tabular. We also have some data in the cloud, while other sources remain OnPrem, which creates this additional layer of complexity to establishing a common data sharing pipeline. And the standardizing this data is a challenge for utilities even internally, but even more so when we have to standardize between other utilities within the state. And it's so helpful to have NYSERDA there as a team in place to help. Then there's the challenge of the data volume, particularly with AMI, because we have customers that have interval readings recorded on five to 15 minute intervals.

That's for our commercial and residential accounts. And we have 3.3 million electric customers. So you can imagine the data volumes there. And here's where I'd like to underscore what Damian said about the importance of handling and governing this type of data collection. There are a couple of guiding principles that we live by. And first of all, not all data is created equally. So data quality and validation and assurance testing are crucial. Supplying incomplete or inaccurate records to this platform could be detrimental to the success of the IEDR project. And customers count on us to protect their private information and for us to operate our system in the safest way possible. And this includes effective cybersecurity protections. Once trust is lost, it's very difficult to gain that back. So to wrap this up, I think that strong and adaptive governance is critical for both the planning of the utility system and the oversight of how the data is going to be handled.

 

Jason Price: 

Lean. I want to stay with you. What is it that you're leading at Con Ed that's around this topic? Can you describe a bit of the day to day work to help facilitate all this?

 

Leon Bukhman: 

Oh, sure. As Damian alluded, the idea of our project is based on use cases. So given a use case that's been prioritized for implementation, through the IEDR stakeholder engagement process, we work to gather the required data to provide it to the platform. Data privacy and security concerns are always discussed and assessed with our IEDR teammates, before the data is shared. And then, beyond that, there's the technical challenge of gathering, formatting, and transferring the actual data. The data that we're gathering is not just required for the IEDR project, but is often very useful for other applications. So we look to make sure that we're not just satisfying the compliance items related to this project, but also, look for opportunities to leverage that integrated data internally, to inform our strategy and try our clean energy goals. Two of the key use cases that we're working on are hosting capacity, so think DER siding, and building benchmarking, which essentially is measuring energy consumption and estimating emissions.

We've had hosting capacity maps publicly available on our website for a few years and are now sharing this data with the IEDR project. Additional layers are being provided, like DER installation queue, to enable other use cases. And new variants of these maps are also being developed that are specific to different kinds of distributed resources, like battery storage and EV chargers. And on the building benchmarking side, that's not new to us either, particularly in New York City, where we've had local laws, requiring owners of large buildings to submit their energy consumptions to the EPA annually and receive a letter grade, based on our benchmark. The challenge there is keeping up with the emerging regulations, which vary across jurisdictions and are looking for more and more granular data from our customers.

 

 

Jason Price: 

And that's really helpful, Leon. Thank you for sharing that. So if I'm getting it straight, you're basically being asked by NYSERDA to hand over the customer data to this publicly available data hub. Still being developed, so it's not available yet. But the plan is that that's what's going to happen. These efforts sound like a path towards what I think is called democratizing the data, which is what the essence of what the Green Button initiative was all about, what was launched years ago. So can you take a moment to compare the difference between the state level data hub and the Green Button initiative? And why didn't the Green Button initiative basically meet the needs of what you're trying to achieve now?

 

Damian Sciano: 

Sure, I'd be happy to do that. Green Button Connect is very exciting, because it puts the power of information in customer's hands. So if you look at it, in the past, we had some very large commercial customers that might have had integral data and could see the readings every 15 minutes. Now we've made that five minutes, and it's easier to get with Green Button Connect. But then, you contrast that to the residential customers, who typically would only have a bill reading once a month. Now, through our AMI data and through Green Button Connect, we're giving them 15 minute interval data. So just tremendous amount more insight into their usage and how that usage would change if they bought an electric vehicle, if they put solar panels on their roof, if they chose an energy storage battery, or they moved to time of use rates or electric heating, et cetera, and so on.

So the customer gets a lot more data quicker in a more granular format, and then, they're able to share that data. And that's why we've branded it Share My Data, so they've got both the benefit of the data and they can share the data. We think this is a super powerful tool. It's already yielding benefits. We've seen it in our demand response programs in particular, but the IEDR is just much, much broader in spectrum. It's not counting on the individual motivated customer that's thinking about doing things with their electric bill now, but it's looking across the whole spectrum of customers and what they're doing and how policies might affect their data, et cetera, and so on. It would allow governments to look at policies for disadvantaged communities, for example, and maybe target certain programs for them and see the result of that.

It could see the effect of time of use pricing, et cetera, and so on. So really powerful tool. And then, hand in hand with that is still maintaining the privacy of the customers and masking the data in an appropriate way. And things that we think we're pretty good at, we're already pretty experienced at the whole data hygiene from our SCADA experience that I mentioned before. And we want to make sure that we can use this data in a way that everybody's happy with it. It's the combination of the Green Button Connect and giving the customer the ability to interact directly with third parties, that'll help them democratize the data, as well as allowing many other stakeholders to look across the spectrum of how customers use that power and build policies around that and programs around that.

 

Jason Price: 

Right. And just a footnote, Damian, the Green Button Connect is on a utility level, so each utility may do things differently and it doesn't standardize the data, which the data hub will.

 

Damian Sciano: 

That's a great point too, Jason. Yes, exactly right.

 

Jason Price: 

Damian, staying with you. Another aspect of investigating data in this way is that it may be altering the longstanding status quo of a utility's relationship with the customer. And I know the customer is very important here. Can you speak to that a bit more?

 

Damian Sciano: 

Yeah, yeah. This is huge, Jason. You look at the traditional utility mindset and maybe go back 40 or 50 years, so it doesn't sound so out of tune. Customers wanted to have their electricity and the only interactions they had with the utility were relatively negative. They were either getting a bill or they were being told that they didn't have power and we were working on it. So for better or for worse, the utilities kind of adopted this limited engagement with the customers. And there's all sorts of reasons why that's changed over the decades. And I think we've adapted. I think we've got to adapt more. New York City in particular, super vibrant. So you got people moving in and out of apartments. Every day, throughout the city, customers want that interaction to be quicker, cleaner, easier, and right on their phone. Customers are making energy decisions that they wouldn't have made even five or 10 years ago, with some of those emerging technologies, like EVs or solar panels.

So they need to understand how they use the power. And then, there's this generational shift that everything else is being done online, and quite frankly, usually a very good experience. So they want that for their energy system as well. So we've really had to evolve, and I think we have to evolve a lot more, especially as we see these new emerging technologies coming out. Now, what hasn't changed is our commitment to our customer's privacy. And if you look at the policies nationwide, they're getting more and more clear also that that's paramount to what we're doing. So we feel like we're very experienced in that area. We're lucky to have a whole team of people working on this as part of the IEDR, and we want to keep doing that and making it better for the customers, in terms of the experience they have and the privacy that's maintained. I might just add that, again, to repeat that point from before too, is we try to discern different policy needs and improvements by looking spectrum wide across all the customer's data. That also becomes super important to be versatile there and constantly evolving and improving.

 

Jason Price: 

I have a project management question for Leon and feel like this would be more in your domain. So Leon, when it comes to the utility data sets, there may be some impressions, by those who don't work with the data, that doing so isn't that big of a deal. After all, corporations and organizations, they're dealing with data all the time. We know that data is an asset and it's part of the business operations. Damian mentioned the volume, or maybe you had mentioned earlier that the volume of the data, the five minute and 15 minutes, so we're talking about terabytes of data. Can you help contextualize a bit the scale of the utility data that you're basically dealing with here?

 

Leon Bukhman: 

Oh sure, Jason. So yeah, I mentioned we have 3.3 million electric customers just in our service territory. So imagine the volume of data if each of those accounts has a recorded meter reading in five to 15 minute intervals. And now, that spans over a course of several years. Our AMI deployment has been ongoing. And as we're wrapping up now, we're going to be aggregating large volumes of this data and also have to process it and analyze it. And of course, not all data is created equally. So we really have to focus on the data quality. For example, there may be many reasons for meter reading delays and also, for our customer billing delays. But we have to make sure that our data remains accurate and consistent between use cases. So think, for example, estimating customer consumption or energy consumption over a stretch of years, which may leverage both of those data sets that we have to keep in tune and align.

 

Jason Price: 

Yeah, there's a lot there. So what are the trends of these data sets? Yeah, I would imagine with computing power getting better and faster, will these processes get easier? Or is the evolution of the utilities undergoing in a way that's you're only sort of, say, scratching the surface of what's possible and even necessary?

 

Leon Bukhman: 

The use cases are certainly growing. So for the building benchmarking use case, for one, that could certainly expand the data requirements. Our current local laws focus on buildings that are 25,000 square feet and above, but that could potentially scale to smaller properties, like 10,000 square feet. And for all of New York state, not just New York City, and the consumption data will be needed to be estimated on an hourly basis or maybe even more granularly down the road, instead of the current monthly requirement. And down the road, there's potential to integrate many other data sets that we haven't even considered in our current use cases.

So think like phasor measurements from PMUs or modeling data from state estimators and much more granular telemetry from our GIS systems. There's also a need for data that's not even currently available in a machine readable format, at least, that could enable other use cases. And we could look to other front runners in the industry, like in the UK and in California, to see where our policy and our industry expectations may be heading. Getting that fresh insight from outside of our industry can also be very beneficial.

 

Jason Price: 

For sure. Damian, I want to go back to a comment that you made when we were planning this session, during the pre-calls. You had mentioned that you're a bit of a fish out of water when it comes to this role. I'm sure you're not the only person who maybe feels this way when it comes to these massive amounts of data and trying to make sense of it all. But can you explain what you mean by that and what advantages perhaps you also bring and what challenges that you face that you can bring to the table, that made this perhaps a role that was perfect for you?

 

Damian Sciano: 

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I'm a 30 plus year Con Edison worker. I had about three and a half years doing Cogen development, with a company called Trigen. I've worked in most of the power plants in New York City and Westchester. I've worked on the Manhattan Electric Distribution System. I overseen the Con Ed Transmission System. But you'll notice, no matter how much I run through my background, none of it's going to say IT or information technology or anything even vaguely resembling that. So it does feel a little funny to be in something where data is very prominent. Even my last job was about where I was working on clean energy, but I was looking to integrate distributed energy resources, like solar and storage, into the grid. But as I think back, and I kind of use those examples to piggyback off of that, pretty much everything I've done was data driven.

It's been over 25 years since I've been in one of those power plants. We divested them in the mid nineties, but they were very information intensive. There were sensors on literally every motor bearing on multiple parts of the boiler. We had all sorts of data that we used to run that power plant. And you contrast that to the customer getting a bill once a month and it's like, "Oh my gosh, what a mismatch of data." But here I am, 30 plus years later, and now, thanks to AMI data, thanks to inverted data, for customers that have energy storage systems and solar systems, there's way more information on that customer side now than there ever was in all of the power plants. So it's not that illogical of a shift. And while I'll never be able to do the programming the way my colleagues can in the IT groups,

I do bring that business perspective and what we're trying to do and the use cases and how that data can be used. So I think, in that context, it makes sense to partner with a business person like me from the energy industry is more of an engineer or something like that. And you see that with the hosting capacity maps, that were kind of a toe in the water to all of this, where "Okay, let's look at the system and see where we can host the most solar or energy storage or EVs." And then, you look where we're trying to go with a DER management system, where we would interact those power plants with the NYISO market and with these small scale aggregated resources, solar and storage and the large scale wind, et cetera, and so on.

And that data and that analytics becomes exponential, and it just becomes so critical to understand the business goals and what you're trying to do. So it's really interesting to me to be a part of this. It's wonderful to work with Leon, because he's actually got the hat I just described and he's also very strong in the IT department. And we also have the benefit of a huge advisory team that NYSERDA's assembled and all the other utilities and all the other stakeholders. So we're really putting a lot of perspectives on this. And the IT piece, if we do this right, we execute right on that. But all of the thinking is around the business case and the use cases.

 

Jason Price: 

Yeah, well, certainly, you've been on quite a journey. I'll say that much. So Damian, let's stick with you. Let's talk about life after this project. So what do you imagine will come next with the IEDR? And what do you imagine Con Edison will be doing with the customer data? I guess you can say my question is really, Damian, once the handover to NYSERDA is complete, what comes next?

 

Damian Sciano: 

Yeah, I don't think the handoff is ever complete, right? Because with the customers getting new data information every five minutes or 15 minutes, there's obviously kind of an ongoing entity. And I think you could say the same for the use case. In fact, I think it's even more multiplicative. You know what I mean? Use cases are almost like rabbits. They breed more and more use cases very quickly. So as you start to think about hosting capacity maps for solar, that very quickly rolled into hosting capacity maps for storage and EVs. And it'll eventually roll into hosting capacity maps for building electrification.

And then, you look at the non-utility data, which we haven't spent a lot of time talking about that, but all the interesting things you can overlay on all of those. Available brownfield sites, campuses that would be willing to put EV charging stations there, rooftop space, et cetera, and so on. And then, you start looking at the customer cases and the building benchmarking, that Leon mentioned early on. And it just keeps multiplying and multiplying and multiplying. So I think, if we do this right, we're on a journey to make this more and more essential part of the clean energy future.

 

Jason Price: 

That's great. So before we jump off, any advice to your peers who are having to now think about this? And as I mentioned, I think that there's a number of states that are looking at putting this through their commission, the orders that are being reviewed, a lot of testimony and discussion around it. Since there's a number of data hubs in conversation right now, put yourself in those people's shoes, who are just starting out. What would you say is a top thing to consider or think about? What are some lessons learned that you could sort of share with them? And you can certainly make it brief. Because I know that this podcast will hopefully help with some of that, which again, we greatly appreciate both of you, your insight, that'll help maybe reduce some of the anxieties that you may have experienced, that your peers might be thinking about now. "Oh boy. What's coming down the pike?" So maybe, Damian, start with you. What are some lessons learned you could share with them, just to pass on to your peers?

 

Damian Sciano: 

I think you're right. Change definitely brings anxiety, and there's a question of, "does this make sense?" So the first thing I'd want to assure somebody just going into this is, yeah, it does. We've already had a lot of success with the hosting capacity maps. New York state is well on its way to meeting its solar goals. And I'd like to think the hosting capacity maps are a big part of that. And then, I would encourage them to keep building on that success, because success breeds success. So that would be my advice. It works, and it's very exciting how we can expand it.

 

Jason Price: 

Sure. Leon, what about you?

 

Leon Bukhman: 

I would just also mention not to forget about the data privacy and cybersecurity. One mistake here, and that could just jeopardize the entire effort greatly. So a strong governance process is the foundation for the long term success of a project like this. And I believe we could get this right and really have an impact.

 

Jason Price: 

Yeah, that's great. Good words. At this point, we want to switch gears and allow our listeners on Energy Central's Power Perspectives understand a bit more about you, the people, versus you, the professional. We do this each week. We call us our lightning round, and that's where we get to ask you a question. And you give back either a one word response or a phrase. Are you guys up for something like this?

 

Damian Sciano: 

Absolutely. Sure.

 

Jason Price: 

Okay. All right. So question number one. The pattern will be, why don't we start with Damian? And I'll ask the question. Damian, you respond and then, Leon, you follow. So to tee it off, gentlemen, Damian, you first. Favorite New York City food?

 

Damian Sciano: 

Oh, Jason, I like a good steak. Think Peter Luger's.

 

Jason Price: 

Okay, Leon.

 

Leon Bukhman: 

Well, I'm from Brooklyn, so I guess pizza. I don't know if that's too cliche.

 

Jason Price: 

Not at all. Dream vacation? Damian?

 

Damian Sciano: 

I would love to go surfing in Costa Rica or some similar place.

 

Jason Price: 

Over to you, Leon.

 

Leon Bukhman: 

Someplace I haven't been. I guess island hopping in Greece.

 

Jason Price: 

All right. What would you be doing if you hadn't ended up in the utility industry? Damian?

 

Damian Sciano: 

I do consider myself a lifelong learner. So I could see enjoying teaching at a college level or something like that. In fact, I'm adjuncting a class at Columbia. It's pretty cool.

 

Jason Price: 

Leon?

 

Leon Bukhman: 

And actually, I have an IT background, so I was expecting to end up in a large tech company, like Microsoft or Google, after college. But no, I ended up in utilities.

 

Jason Price: 

I'm glad you did, but we'll keep that for another conversation. Best career advice you've ever gotten? Damian?

 

Damian Sciano: 

Yeah, I've got this one late in life, but it was still pretty valuable. And it was to pick a lifestyle and not a career. And it's kind of just telling you to look beyond. It's certainly important to pick a career and pick something that you like, but think about the peripherals that are going to color it. "Is it going to be a job that you travel a lot or don't travel a lot? And which one do you want to do? Is it going to be something where you can feel like you have a purpose, like lighting up the New York City skyline? Or is it something that's just going to find as a challenge that you want to do?" And things like that. So that was pretty good advice, to kind of think a little broader than the career.

 

Jason Price: 

I like that. Leon?

 

Leon Bukhman: 

I actually, I heard Damian mentioned that before, and I thought it was really good advice. And I just would add to that, that you really should follow your effort, not your passion. Because sometimes, they can be really passionate about a way of life or a cause, but then, realize that the effort required isn't really sustainable for you.

 

Jason Price: 

Fantastic. And what are you most motivated by? Damian?

 

Damian Sciano: 

I'm motivated by adventures with goals. "Nobody's ever jumped this high before. I'd like to do it." Or at least go down an exciting path. So skiing a certain mountain, hiking a certain trail, et cetera, and so on. That highly motivates me.

 

Jason Price: 

Leon?

 

Leon Bukhman: 

I guess, for me, it's impact. Make it sound like I'm very much more conscious here, but I really like to focus on what's the impact and the result of a project.

 

Jason Price: 

Nicely done. Great job navigating the lightning round. And it's a tradition that means that we give you the final word to the audience. So what's the one message...? We'll give both of you, of course, but Damian, we'll start off with you. What's the one message you hope comes through and sticks for our listeners of today's episode?

 

Damian Sciano: 

It may not have been called out explicitly, but do what you can and then, expand on that. So hosting capacity maps, great impact, great place to start. And then, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. That old explanation. Get some progress and then, move on. Keep striving for perfection, but don't be paralyzed by it.

 

Jason Price: 

Leon, anything to add?

 

Leon Bukhman: 

No, I think Damian said it best already.

 

Jason Price: 

Fantastic. Well, this has been a fantastic conversation. I'm sure our audience will have plenty of questions to share when this episode drops in Energy Central. So I hope you both stick around the community to keep the conversation going, answer any questions. Certainly, you'll get notified of any, as questions come in. But again, gentlemen, thank you both for your insight on today's show.

 

Damian Sciano: 

Thank you very much.

 

Leon Bukhman: 

Thank you, Jason.

 

Jason Price: 

And you can always reach Damian and Leon through the Energy Central platform, where they welcome your questions and comments. And we also want to give a shout out of thanks to the podcast sponsors that made today's episode possible. Thanks to West Monroe. West Monroe works with the nation's largest electric, gas, and water utilities in their telecommunication, grid modernization, and digital and workforce transformations. West Monroe brings a multidisciplinary team that blends utility operations and technology expertise to address modernizing aging infrastructure, advisory on transportation electrification, ADMS deployments, data and analytics, and cybersecurity. And once again, I'm your host, Jason Price. Plug in and stay fully charged in the discussion, by hopping into the community at energycentral.com. And we'll see you next time at the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast.

 

About Energy Central Podcasts

The ‘Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast’ features conversations with thought leaders in the utility sector. At least twice monthly, we connect with an Energy Central Power Industry Network community member to discuss compelling topics that impact professionals who work in the power industry. Some podcasts may be a continuation of thought-provoking posts or discussions started in the community or with an industry leader that is interested in sharing their expertise and doing a deeper dive into hot topics or issues relevant to the industry.

The ‘Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast’ is the premiere podcast series from Energy Central, a Power Industry Network of Communities built specifically for professionals in the electric power industry and a place where professionals can share, learn, and connect in a collaborative environment. Supported by leading industry organizations, our mission is to help global power industry professionals work better. Since 1995, we’ve been a trusted news and information source for professionals working in the power industry, and today our managed communities are a place for lively discussions, debates, and analysis to take place. If you’re not yet a member, visit www.EnergyCentral.com to register for free and join over 200,000 of your peers working in the power industry.

The Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast is hosted by Jason Price, Community Ambassador of Energy Central. Jason is a Business Development Executive at West Monroe, working in the East Coast Energy and Utilities Group. Jason is joined in the podcast booth by the producer of the podcast, Matt Chester, who is also the Community Manager of Energy Central and energy analyst/independent consultant in energy policy, markets, and technology.  

If you want to be a guest on a future episode of the Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast, let us know! We’ll be pulling guests from our community members who submit engaging content that gets our community talking, and perhaps that next guest will be you! Likewise, if you see an article submitted by a fellow Energy Central community member that you’d like to see broken down in more detail in a conversation, feel free to send us a note to nominate them.  For more information, contact us at [email protected]. Podcast interviews are free for Expert Members and professionals who work for a utility.  We have package offers available for solution providers and vendors. 

Happy listening, and stay tuned for our next episode! Like what you hear, have a suggestion for future episodes, or a question for our guest? Leave a note in the comments below.

All new episodes of the Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast will be posted to the relevant Energy Central community group, but you can also subscribe to the podcast at all the major podcast outlets, including:

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