The way we produce, distribute, and consume electricity is changing and a paradigm shift has begun. Nowhere is this statement truer than in the Province of Ontario, Canada.  These changes are part of a global trend that Ontario is leading—and propelled by. The province is among several jurisdictions around the world that have recognized the need to modernize their electricity systems to fully capture the economic and environmental benefits of this transition.  These are exciting times.  Ontario’s electricity system is truly in transition.  The pace of change is unprecedented in many ways.

Ontario-based Hydro One is involved in a number of initiatives designed to sustain and modernize Ontario’s electricity grid. These initiatives are bringing substantial changes to the way Hydro One operates the system, including new business processes, skill sets, and opportunities for staff. However, the concept of a “smart grid” is generally not well understood by consumers and utility employees have only recently been introduced to the strategic importance of smart grid development.  Hydro One’s Advanced Distribution System (otherwise known as Smart Grid) Project Team is implementing change management strategies and tactics to build awareness and engage employees so they can contribute to building the solution they will benefit from.           

Kathy Cowan Sahadath is program manager for Hydro One Networks and is a change management professional within the Hydro One Corporate Projects group. “I have the good fortune to be involved in a lot of our major business transformations,” she states. Over the last 10 years or so, she has been involved in an Operating Grid Control Centre amalgamation, major SAP implementations, Smart Meter implementation, and now Smart Grid (which Hydro One calls “Advanced Distribution System”). Cowan Sahadath helped create the change programs for the projects, as well as bring together the teams needed for the projects. 

For the Advanced Distribution System project, Cowan Sahadath recruited Deb Bradbury, a principal consultant with Enspiria Solutions a Black & Veatch Company to be a vendor partner. “We now have a full change team that is working through the different phases that we have designed for this project,” states Cowan Sahadath.

Hydro One started to think about its Smart Grid strategy back in 2008. It began by asking what a roadmap for smart grid would look like for the next five to 10 years. What evolved from this was a Steering Committee that led to the birth of a project team. 

“It has been exciting to see the process evolve over the last three years, as well as to see the enormous scope of what our industry is facing,” continues Cowan Sahadath. “Our Autovation presentation will provide more information on the details of the scope of our project.” Cowan Sahadath and Bradbury will speak Wednesday, Sept. 28 at 10 a.m. on the topic “Change Management Enables Smart Grid Innovation.”

From a change management or business transformation perspective, Cowan Sahadath believes that there is tremendous opportunity to rethink how Hydro One does business. “What the utility industry is facing is an opportunity for major changes in how we do business and how we interact with our customers in the future,” she adds. As a result, she believes, while the technology is very important, there is a huge human element the utility has incorporated into all of its plans and implementations going forward. “This is why I think change management and transformation is so important,” she states. “It is an opportunity for us to start to help influence a change in that mindset with the employees, as well as with our customers and stakeholders outside the company.”

“We will also present information on the unique challenges we are facing with this project,” states Bradbury. “It is very complex. We have a large project team with 10 different work streams, so there are challenges with coordinating and communicating the important decisions that impact the work in progress.” She adds: “We know the tools and data the new technology provides as well as new business processes will offer employees opportunities to make better business decisions and to work more efficiently and ultimately improve operations.”

Another challenge, according to Bradbury, is: How do you get employees to buy into all of this and be willing to change how they work? They want to know how much it will really help them.

As a result, one large part of the initiative involves business process reengineering – taking a fresh look at existing processes to determine how new tools and information will improve the quality and timeliness of business decisions. For example: How will Distribution Engineers do real-time studies? How will the Control Room and Provincial Lines deal with planned and un-planned outages? How will the Control Room deal with new alarms?  How will Distribution Controllers and Dispatchers be able to target where to send crews more accurately? “We are taking a fresh look at all of these things and determining what the future will look like,” adds Bradbury.        

So what is Hydro One doing to facilitate change management? A lot of things. “From a change management perspective, we have involved the key stakeholders right up front,” replies Bradbury. “Even in Phase 0, when we were just planning, we had representatives from lines of business at the table who we expected would be impacted.  Ultimately, they are the ones who have to do the work, so they have to be part of the decisions, and they have to believe in it.”          

Another key has been being sure the utility has very active and visible leadership throughout the process. This includes participating on the Ontario Smart Grid Forum and staying aligned with the Ministry of Energy.           

Communication is also important, according to Cowan Sahadath. “At every step of the process, we need to make sure that there is frequent and open communication,” she states. “It also needs to be two-way, so that there is good opportunity to listen to people and get feedback.”

Bradbury agrees with the importance of communication. “We have developed a very detailed communication strategy and plan for our different stakeholder groups,” she states. “We are currently executing an Awareness Campaign and using many communication vehicles which we will describe during our Autovation presentation.”

According to Cowan Sahadath, because smart grid development is still so new and untested, there are not a lot of “best practices” from which Hydro One can learn. “As a result, along the way, we, as an industry, need to leverage the knowledge and information from our own work as well as other utilities as quickly as possible,” she emphasizes. “In fact, the ideal is to share ‘lessons learned’ in almost a real-time environment.”           

And this, in actuality, is what Utilimetrics and Autovation are all about.