Paul Ciampoli
Welcome to the latest episode of Public Power Now. I'm Paul Ciampoli, APPA's news director.
Our guest on this episode is Janisse Quinones, CEO and Chief Engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
In May of this year, the Los Angeles City Council confirmed Janisse as CEO and Chief engineer of LADWP.
Janisse, thanks for joining us on the podcast.
You bring more than 25 years of leadership experience as a senior executive in utility and engineering industries to your new role at LADWP.
Can you offer additional details on your career leading up to your joining LADWP?
Janisse Quinones
I've been in three utilities in my career...I started my utility career at San Diego Gas and Electric. Then I moved back home to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria for the restoration of the grid. I was there for about a year until we were able to energize the last customer impacted by the storm.
And I ran crews there.
And then I moved to National Grid for about 3 years and after that PG&E and now I'm in DWP.
During my career, I've done anything from customer service, customer program, operations engineer, gas, electric and now water.
It's interesting to see how much of all the best things and best lessons learned from all the utilities like coming to the forefront in this job and also the things that I wasn't too passionate about in those areas that I identify now that I'm trying to fix in this organization. So I have also been in the military for 19 1/2 years and my background, the military is regulatory compliance, technical engineering inspections and emergency response.
And so I've responded to... Deepwater Horizon, Hurricane Maria and the Afghan resettlement mission as the planning Chief, Ops chief and an incident commander, so that's really helpful here. Knowing how to manage any type of emergency, the training comes in, you're in a good mood. You're not losing your patience and you're able to meet the organization through some of those big disasters.
Paul Ciampoli
Is there anything that has surprised you about being in a public power environment so far? How does it compare to the investor-owned utility environment?
Janisse Quinones
Very different than the IOUs, but similar. So it's definitely a utility, right? Operates like any other utility. But the biggest change is that we're also a city department. And so as part of the big city family, we are constantly solving for the issues that affect the local region and the local customers, and so we're very connected to our customers in a way that I have not seen before because when you have big IOUs the customer base is very different -- meaning it's expanded and you have other things that are in the forefront, like CPUC and CAISO and other things that are driving your policy, whereas when you're in the city, the city drives the policy for the utilities and so the programs that we generate, how...we manage the programs are very tied to our community.
Paul Ciampoli
What have been your immediate priorities as the CEO and chief engineer at LADWP?
Janisse Quinones
This is month two and a half... as you know when leadership changes there's always fear of change and really understanding who your talent is. Where are your gaps from a leadership perspective, what is working, what's not working, what’s high priority. So I've been doing a lot of that assessment.
A lot of connecting with our employees, understanding the areas that I need to tackle immediately and the areas that can be longer term strategy and I've also been working a lot [with] our stakeholders and rebranding the company and making sure people know that we're here to do the right thing for our customers and we're going to do it ethically and with integrity and that everything we do has an equity lens.
Paul Ciampoli
Have you had an opportunity since you took on your new role to get out into the community and meet with customers?
Janisse Quinones
Last week we had an event in Watts, one of our underserved communities, disadvantaged communities. We were able to provide 600 portable AC units for our low income elderly seniors. Because of the heat wave and how much heat is impacting our most vulnerable populations like our young kids and our elderly and I was in Watts in the Community Center making sure that we were there to provide not only the AC units, but low income programs, a level pay plan, so that they use air conditioners that were given them to improve their health.
I'm working a lot with the tribes in Owens Valley on the water side as well, and I did that the first two weeks in the job, making sure that they know that they're on my mind and that they're a priority for the way that we engage with stakeholders.
And I'm out in the field almost every week, making sure that I connect with my employees, but also the communities we're serving.
Paul Ciampoli
LADWP is committed to transitioning to 100% renewable energy by 2035. Can you offer an overview of the steps the utility is taking to meet this goal?
Janisse Quinones
One of the biggest goals is creating the goal, right?....For LADWP it is a very well defined goal – in 2035 we’re 100% clean energy, 70% local water and we're going to do that equitably.
Looking at defining the goal and ensuring that everybody understands that's where we're heading, because a lot of people think we're not going there and committing and enlisting everybody because this is not just DWP but also our communities have to be part of the equation.
They have to be actively involved in the transition -- our policymakers, our environmental community, any stakeholder that has a say on how we move policy and how we move technology and innovation as part of the conversation.
So a lot of collaboration is going on, engagement, ensuring that we are having the right conversations at the right time with the right people -- it's critical.
The other thing is our renewable portfolio needs to expand. And so today we're at 42%. We have a goal that we have to be 80% renewable by 2030. So we're halfway there in 2024. We have a lot of work to do, not only in securing more renewable resources, but increasing the transmission capacity to bring those resources into the local basin and while at the same time increasing our local renewable resources, right, like our rooftop solar, utility owned solar in the community and then transforming our generation fleet from fossil fuels into either hydrogen or other renewable sources that are critical for our reliability and capacity in the region.
Paul Ciampoli
I had one follow up question for you, if I could – specifically, what's your take in terms of the use of energy storage in the context of renewable energy and perhaps pairing the two?
Janisse Quinones
It's a critical part of the equation, right? Right now we're generating more renewable energy that we can use...Some of the work that we're doing locally is creating EV charging hubs, which will have also local storage capacity so that we can store that excess power and those hours that it's not peak hour and we redispatch it when we need it locally.
And those are going to be primarily in disadvantaged communities...in L.A., 54% of our community is disadvantaged. This is going to have multiple benefits for the community, including resiliency, microgrids, EV charging at residential rates, energy storage and creating local jobs for our disadvantaged communities.
Paul Ciampoli
As you embark on your new role, is there anything you hope to learn from other public power leaders?
Janisse Quinones
I'm a constant learner, so anything that they have to offer, I'm all ears....It's important to understand the policy that we make as public power, very different than IOUs. Very different way to make policy, and I think APPA is a perfect example of how we come together and create policies that impact our public power sector in a way that benefits our customers because we are different than IOUs and so policy is a big one.
Any innovation they're using, how they're engaging with customers especially on data centers and AI centers where we're seeing areas where we had excess power and now we're running out of power, how we're solving for that in a micro and macro level.
I think it's critical for all of us to have those conversations and solve the problems together.
I'll tell you 100% clean energy by 2035 -- it's a challenge because we don't have all the answers.
And so it's a journey, right? And we’ve got to work on the journey together to make sure that we use all the brain cells that we have in the community to solve for the unanswered questions that we have today.
Paul Ciampoli
In speaking with other public power utility leaders, it seems clear to me that when it comes to integrated resource planning or planning for renewable energy, it's increasingly unpredictable in terms of planning for the long term. Would you agree with that?
Janisse Quinones
I agree with that and I agree with the fact that we don't know how we're going to pay for it yet, and so that balance between getting green and be affordable is something that we have to get very creative with and also our supply chain is strained.
I think we really have to figure out how to get that solved because we're all trying to do the same thing at the same time and the resources are limited and the last thing is workforce. I think we're all struggling to hire the right workforce that's going to be able to run the system as it is today and transform for the 2035 goals that we have, right?
And so workforce development work for strategic planning, all of that goes into the integrated resource plan, which has a lot of questions that we really need to put a different thinking cap on that we haven't really had to deal with in the past.
Paul Ciampoli
What are your long term goals for LADWP?
Janisse Quinones
My long term goals are very well defined, which is the 100% clean energy by 2035, 70% local water.
But one of my number one goals and I think our differentiator for our energy transition is making sure that we do this equitably and we don't leave any community behind and that we think about our projects in a comprehensive multi benefit approach for our communities.
One of the goals that drives me every day is really ensuring that I'm an enabler of creating a new middle class in LA by increasing work, high paying jobs that are staying in LA to support the LA clean energy transition.
Paul Ciampoli
Janisse, thanks again for joining us and we'd love to have you back perhaps this time next year to discuss this and other topics.
Janisse Quinones
Thank you, Paul.
Paul Ciampoli
Thanks for listening to this episode of Public Power Now, which is produced by Julio Guerrero, Graphic and Digital Designer at APPA.
I'm Paul Ciampoli and we'll be back next week with more from the world of public power.
