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Consumers Energy's Tonya Berry on Plans for Stronger and Smarter Energy Grid
Intro ...
About Tonya Berry
Tonya Berry, senior vice president of transformation and engineering at Consumers Energy, discussed the company’s reliability road map in a February 2024 interview. She said the plan includes increased undergrounding of power lines, tree trimming, and a commitment to restore power to all customers within 24 hours within five years. Berry noted that Consumers Energy spends $100 million per year trimming trees, which she described as the leading cause of outages. She also mentioned that the company provides meals and refreshments to customers during extended outages as part of its community service efforts. In a February 2022 podcast, Berry, then vice president of gas operations, outlined Consumers Energy’s goal to achieve net zero methane emissions by 2030, a decade ahead of the company’s broader carbon neutrality target of 2040. She stated that the company is “hardening, not expanding the system” and that natural gas will continue to play a role in the future. Berry, who holds a degree in industrial engineering from the University of Michigan, said she joined Consumers Energy after working in the automotive industry.
Transcript (52 segments)
H
Host0:00
Today from Consumers Energy, Senior Vice President of Transformation and Engineering, Tanya Barry. Welcome to the show.
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Tonya Berry0:08
Thank you for having me.
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Host0:11
Yeah, nice to have you back. The last time Tanya was on our show was via Zoom during the pandemic, so nice to have you here in person.
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Tonya Berry0:18
Yeah, good to be here in person. Like my first time here, so I'm loving it. I love this, it's fabulous.
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Host0:25
It's great to have you here. So, Transformation and Engineering, wow, that sounds like a couple of different things.
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Tonya Berry0:34
Yes, a couple of a lot of different things.
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Host0:37
The big area that you are Senior Vice President over.
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Tonya Berry0:42
Yeah, it's a mouthful and it feels heavy in responsibility, but I'll break it down for you on what that means. So when you think about my area of responsibility, it includes gas engineering, so our gas side of the business, electric distribution, so that's wires. If you think about supply, so how we supply energy, which can include generation and how we buy and sell in the markets, and then renewables. So I get to manage, build, and acquire our renewables. So as we're transitioning and clean energy coming off our coal facilities, I get to work with my team thinking about the next generation of energy: solar, wind, battery, and all of those things.
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Host1:23
Yeah, energy, it's big news today because we've really got a lot going on in Michigan. We've got these battery plants that are springing up, we've got electric vehicles that will soon be dominating the roads, we've got all kinds of commitments by Consumers Energy to be out of the coal business, to be in renewable energy primarily. And you're giving yourself deadlines of when you want to accomplish all those.
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Tonya Berry1:54
Yes, in the next 10 to 20 years we'll be clean and green and lean.
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Host2:00
And in the next five years, you just recently introduced your reliability roadmap. And we all, everyone's, no secret we have power outages when we have severe weather in Michigan, both winter and spring, summer and fall. It could happen anytime.
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Tonya Berry2:22
Anytime. You know, number one, our job is to keep the lights on for our customers. And we know we have not been doing the best job of that. We've been listening to our customers and we've been thinking about this. We've been watching our weather get more severe. We've been seeing more wind events on the system in a very more severe way. And what we've really been thinking about is how do we serve our customers, one, so they don't lose power, and if and when they do, how do we get them back on faster.
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Host2:56
Yeah, so the wind typically or ice takes the power line down or takes the tree limbs down, which takes the power lines down. And then you've got line workers that in severe weather are out trying to restore power. That's a tough job. I salute line workers.
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Tonya Berry3:13
You know, let me say this: I salute all of our co-workers that actually go out to restore power. So it is not only our linemen and women, it's our dispatchers, it's our contact center, it's actually maybe you've even seen, I was here in Jackson, you've seen our co-workers that sit on live wires until we can come de-energize those wires. And so it takes thousands of people to restore power when we need to. And I just want to say to all of my co-workers, thank you for your service in doing that.
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Host3:46
I'll join you in that as well. And as a way to salute all those workers, we actually have, you brought a video that showcases what life is like for a line worker.
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Tonya Berry3:58
Yes, we have a day in the life.
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Host4:01
A day in the life. Let's check it out.
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Narrator4:07
To get started on the right foot, your morning needs power. And while you're still hitting snooze, Cleave has already been hard at work making sure you have that power. He's a Consumers Energy line worker, and this is how he powers your day. The start of the day is usually firing up the computer. That's where we have all of our jobs. The first job on his computer is from a customer who only has power to half his home.
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Cleave4:36
Yeah, I'm not going to mess with electricity, so yeah, good call. First thing I do when I pull up is I kind of look for any obvious signs of what could have caused a power outage, or you know, maybe there's some recent excavation in the ground. And then touch base with the customer too, getting their side of the story, and then you can really start putting pieces of the puzzle together.
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Narrator4:55
After confirming the issue, all right, I think we found the source. So Cleave quickly locates the problem spot. Since it's underground, 811 will be called to mark all utilities.
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Cleave5:06
So this is an emergency for us, so they'll have three hours to respond. Then a crew will come out to excavate and make the repairs. In the meantime, Cleave has more jobs to get to. You could be doing little power outages here, and then the next thing you got a, you know, crazy car-pole accident where the primary is still hot, people could be trapped inside the car, the police have the road shut down. So really just trying to get prepared for any scenario.
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Narrator5:29
Fortunately, his next job isn't a car-pole accident, but a call about power that is blinking on and off in a customer's home. Cleave starts by addressing the biggest cause of power problems in Michigan.
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Cleave5:42
Trees grow up, touch the line, grow into the line, and over time, you know, can cause issues. There are so many trees in Michigan. Consumers Energy spends $100 million per year trimming them.
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Narrator5:56
Next, Cleave gets in his bucket to check the equipment on the pole.
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Cleave6:01
So, changing out those connections there. I actually did find a connection that was fairly loose and even a bit corroded.
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Narrator6:09
With the corrosion cleaned, connection tightened, and customer notified, it's on to the next job.
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Cleave6:16
Basically going to be taking all this open wire down and replacing it with brand new wire. On big storms and stuff, when winds come through, it really does make a difference, especially over time. The more of this old wire that gets taken out and the new wire gets put back in, the more reliable our source becomes.
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Narrator6:35
After lending a hand to improve reliability and giving the next generation of line workers a few tips, that'll be fine, you just got to cut that lashing, Cleave is off again to the next job on his list.
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Cleave6:46
Essentially, I look at all those jobs as an issue for somebody. And if I can go out there and fix that issue and make a happy customer, you know, that's awesome. That's a great feeling for me. So the next time you're getting ready for your day, remember all the work it takes to make your day possible.
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Host7:13
Awesome. So salute to all Consumers Energy employees who put the lights back on and turn our coffee pots back on. One of the things I know you hear this, Tanya, why don't you bury the wires then the wind wouldn't blow them down?
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Tonya Berry7:30
We do hear that. And actually, as part of our reliability roadmap, that is part of our plan. So we have a plan to go through and be strategic in the way in which we underground. Now, we can't underground everything, but the good news is over time we have found ways to underground at a lower cost. Before the technology got better, methods got better, it was incredibly expensive to do. Now we've found ways and we're building a workforce so we can go through and execute undergrounding. So we'll be doing more undergrounding as this plan calls. And we are excited, you know, when we compare ourselves across other states and we say what are they doing, they've undergrounded, and so that is part of our strategy here.
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Host8:15
In downtown Jackson, you've undergrounded.
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Tonya Berry8:18
Yes, we have. And we appreciate that because our power doesn't go out when we have storms. But you know, when we think about undergrounding, so undergrounding is just one part of the strategy, but there will be other things that we'll be doing. So you saw trees, trees are the number one cause of outage. So we'll tree trim, and best practice is that you trim the same trees every seven years, so you get in a cycle of every seven years. A lot of trees in Michigan, I don't know, people have driven them, lots of trees. You know, as beautiful as we love when they change colors and come back, we do like those leaves to fall off those trees. But tree trimming is critical and it's one of our things. Also, you saw in the video, right, the lineman in the video was doing a little proactive inspection and maintenance. That's part of our plan too, to do it before it breaks. It's cheaper to do it on straight time in the day versus the nighttime in the windiest conditions on overtime. So we're inspecting our system, 50,000 miles, each year we'll see the system, entire system once a year.
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Host9:19
So you've been studying the weather and what everyone thinks is that, yeah, it's more severe, the winds are stronger, there's more frequency of things like ice storms, and it's scientific fact.
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Tonya Berry9:38
Oh yeah. You know, there was a point in time we would see 30 miles or even 40 mph winds and it was like, whoa, that's a lot of wind. Now we're getting upwards of over 65 mph winds. And even if you think about August, seven tornadoes in the state of Michigan, that was a lot of tornadoes that caused significant damage not only in our area but across the state. And so you think about that, we're building for that so that we can make sure, putting up stronger poles and conductors to withstand that kind of wind speed. I know people say, hey, you're talking about hurricane-force winds, but you know what, we're getting up in some cases on some days some lower-level zero hurricane-force winds.
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Host10:22
So we've got a commitment in five years, you want to be able to get everyone's power back on within 24 hours. That's a pretty substantial commitment.
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Tonya Berry10:37
Yeah, it's an aggressive plan. It is some of the most ambitious goals we've set in this company on our system. But here's what I know: it is possible for us to do. It's going to take time for us to get there. We have this five-year plan we filed over a week ago now with the Michigan Public Service Commission. They'll evaluate, review the plan. We'll start executing this plan in partnership and agreements. And every year we have an opportunity to revisit the plan. And revisiting the plan means we'll check to make sure we're doing the right things. Do we need to adjust the plan? Is there new technology on the system that makes it cheaper and faster for us to do? So we've set the plan, but we'll revisit and update the plan every single year based on our progress and what we see the conditions.
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Host11:23
One thing I think a lot of customers assume is that if the power goes out, that you know it. If my home's power goes out, oh well, Consumers knows, they know, they can tell. But that's not the case in some cases, but not all cases.
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Tonya Berry11:37
And so what we are doing is putting more technology on the system so we can know. And so that'll be part of the plan as we're adding so we can see, and it'll be speed to when we can restore it. That's part of that 24 hours. You know, right now and in history, a lot of the work that we do is we had to go look up at the lines and drive down the street here in Jackson to see if we could find where the problem was at. We're adding sensors to the line, which is a technology that will point right to the location where the fault or the errors happen on the system, and we can send a crew right there to fix it and they don't have to go look for it.
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Host12:13
Talk about a time saver. Having more renewable energy like wind and solar, and I think to a much lesser extent hydro, does that provide the backbone to deliver the energy more reliably when we have those storms?
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Tonya Berry12:32
It does, but they still connect to the grid. So you still have to have grid connection. And so we need reliable and a resilient system so all of those systems can work.
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Host12:44
And the other thing you want to be able to do within these five years in your reliability roadmap is not have any storm or event knock out more than 100,000 people, because we've been up in a quarter of a million people.
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Tonya Berry12:58
Yes, we have. In August, we were up a quarter of a million people. And so if we build that system, we get less than 100,000. Now, and you know, I mentioned some of those things: when we harden, we underground, we inspect early, those things will be very important for us to achieve those goals. And proven, you know, this is where this is research done by the Electric Research Institute around the United States, and there are other companies. This is proven work that will prove, and so that's why we stand on not only on our own research and assessing our system, but this has proven work from our benchmarking practices as well.
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Host13:38
And it's not just like strong winds and summer storms, we've had ice storms.
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Tonya Berry13:45
Ice, yes. So we want to protect for ice as well. That was February, and I actually drove around Jackson. And so I was doing some pole replacements, and just, I know it was tough here in Jackson, but I will tell you, I was with one of the crews here in Jackson. I don't know who the young lady was, but I just want to thank her. She brought up coffees to the crews, and I thought that was so nice. Because you know, and why I talk about our co-workers, because just as it feels really bad to be without power, those co-workers often too are experiencing power outages. They're away from their families because our heart is a heart to serve. And so they want to get there to serve and make sure customers get back up because they don't want to miss a holiday, they don't want to miss a meal, they don't want to miss a kid's game. They want to miss, and so we're all in this together so we can serve quickly. So whoever she was in Jackson, thank you so much because you brought coffee and they were super happy. So thank you.
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Host14:39
That's nice. Yeah, I think all these people are our neighbors, appreciate that. Also, when these things happen, you host events like you have meals and breakfast and other, you provide other refreshments and distractions for customers without power.
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Tonya Berry15:01
Yeah, you know, it's important for the communities that we serve that we show our heart of service. That we know it is inconvenient, you're home, you're without power, you're hungry, maybe you were cooking a meal, you're thinking about the food in your fridge. And so we have a part that we have to do and play in that and show that we can serve and show up and offer some things to our communities.
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Host15:23
Well, we'll look forward to those improvements during the rollout of the reliability roadmap. And let's just hope we don't have those severe storms.
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Tonya Berry15:32
I know, right? But we have to be ready for them. We will be ready for them.
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Host15:36
All right, thanks for coming in today.
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Tonya Berry15:38
Thank you so much.
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Host15:40
The Senior Vice President of Transformation and Engineering at Consumers Energy, Tanya Barry. A lot more to come.