A Q&A with Janisse Quiñones, who started as CEO and chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in May 2024. Quiñones joined LADWP from Pacific Gas and Electric Co., where she served as senior vice president of gas engineering and then as senior vice president of electric operations. She also served in executive roles for National Grid, Cobra Energy, and San Diego Gas & Electric. She has managed the engineering and design of natural gas distribution, transmission, and infrastructure projects, including helping lead restoration and reconstruction projects in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, and she oversaw various meter compliance, design, and construction projects.
Quiñones served in the U.S. Coast Guard full time as a commander and as deputy, planning and incident management, and is an active U.S. Coast Guard Reserve officer. Born and raised in Caguas, Puerto Rico, she has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez Campus. She holds a master of business administration and a master of advanced studies in international relations and is a licensed professional engineer in five states. She is a proud wife and mom of five and has a 14-year-old puppy.
Based on an interview on the Public Power Now podcast.
What are your goals coming into the role, and what would you like to see LADWP accomplish?
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? I’ve been doing 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. I’ve also been working a lot [with] our stakeholders in 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.
My long-term goals are very well defined — 100% clean energy and 70% local water by 2035. I’m ensuring that everybody understands that’s where we’re heading, because this is not just DWP; 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. 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.
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 while at the same time increasing our local renewable resources, like utility-owned solar in the community.
One of my No. 1 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. One of the goals that drives me every day is really ensuring that I’m an enabler of creating a new middle class in L.A. by increasing high-paying jobs that are staying in L.A. to support the L.A. clean energy transition. Some of the work that we’re doing locally is creating EV charging hubs, which will have local storage capacity so that we can store that excess power in those hours that it’s not peak hour and 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, and creating local jobs.
Is there anything that has surprised you about being in a public power environment so far? How does it compare to the corporate utility environment?
It’s very different than the IOUs, but similar. It operates like any other utility, but the biggest change is that we’re also a city department. 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. When you have big IOUs, the customer base is very different. It’s expanded, and you have other things that are in the forefront, like [the public utilities commission and California Independent System Operator] and other things that are driving your policy. When you’re in the city, the city drives the policy for the utilities, and so the programs that we generate — and how we manage the programs — are very tied to our community.
I’m out in the field almost every week, making sure that I connect with my employees, but also the communities we’re serving. Last week we had an event in Watts, one of our underserved, disadvantaged communities. We were able to provide 600 portable AC units for 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. I was in the Watts Community Center making sure that we were there to provide not only the AC units, but information on our programs and a level pay plan, so that they can use the air conditioners that were given to 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 they’re on my mind and that they’re a priority for the way that we engage with stakeholders.
It’s interesting to see how much of all the best things and best lessons learned from all the utilities are coming to the forefront in this job. During my career, I’ve done anything from customer service, customer programs, operations, gas, electric, and now water. I have also been in the military for 191/2 years, and my background in the military is regulatory compliance, technical engineering, inspections, and emergency response. I’ve responded to Deepwater Horizon, Hurricane Maria, and the Afghan resettlement mission. 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. Knowing how to manage any type of emergency, the training comes in … you’re not losing your patience and you’re able to meet the organization through some of those big disasters.
Where can/should utility leaders work together to share their knowledge and solutions? Is there anything you hope to learn from other public power leaders?
I’m a constant learner, so anything that they have to offer, I’m all ears. Policy is a big one. 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. 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 on 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. It’s a journey, 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. We’re all trying to do the same thing at the same time, and the resources are limited.
The last thing is workforce. 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 it for the 2035 goals that we have. Workforce development, strategic planning — all of that goes into the integrated resource plan, which has a lot of questions that we haven’t really had to deal with in the past. We really need to put a different thinking cap on.
