Episode 114: Faces of the Industry 2025, Part 2

[Music] Welcome to the flux capacitor. A podcast about the future of electricity. This is part two of our 2025 faces of the industry. This National Electricity Month, electricity Canada is introducing you to the people who are the faces of the industry. Electricity Canada's faces of the industry award highlights the work of six industry professionals who have demonstrated leadership in every aspect of the electricity sector. We created the faces of the industry award last year and it came out of a simple but powerful premise. The electricity sector aren't just companies, they're people. The great thing about faces is it's a real grassroots campaign. We have 47 nominations for the award this year, representing people from all parts of the electricity sector and from every region. All we ask for is for the recipient to demonstrate innovation, leadership and outstanding achievement in their field. This year's award winners have been selected from every region of Canada and come from every part of the industry including executive leadership, finance, engineering, line work and procurement. What they all have in common is leadership and innovation. And of course, their work in the electricity sector. I had the privilege of talking to all of this year's faces of the industry recipients for the flux capacitor and it was humbling to realize the breadth of experience and talent the electricity sector possesses. I hope that you will experience this for yourself as you listen to my conversations with this year's faces of the industry. On the pod today, the second batch of three of those faces of the industry. First up on the podcast is Jennifer Williams and Newflannel Aberdeaux Hydro and I'm the president and CEO. Jennifer, first off, congratulations on being a recipient of this year's faces of the industry. Thank you so much, Quaid Honour, to represent my organization. So why don't we start off just for intersake. President CEO, Newflannel Aberdeaux Hydro, it's been a big year for Newflannel Aberdeaux. It's been a big year for you. I think it's been a big year for you to be able to talk about the negotiations that have led to a new deal after decades and decades. Maybe for the listener to talk a little bit about what it was like to be involved in that process and what does this new deal going to mean for the company and for the people of Newflannel Aberdeaux? Sure. The existing contract between Newflannel Aberdeaux Hydro is a majority owner of CFL Co. We are the majority owner with Hydro Quebec being the minority owner. We own about two thirds, they own about a third. And the original contract essentially was a fixed price contract at a very low price set really 50-ish years ago with some evolution since. But incredibly low. And through the changes of our history and electricity markets, Hydro Quebec had excess capacity or excess energy in its system that it could sell for a lot of money. And so that has been really, really tough for the people in our province in the psyche of pretty much everybody in the province to sort of see that happen when they really felt. It was unfair. Our province had taken that to court several times to no joy. And so it had been a really tough thing hanging over the psyche of a lot of people in the province. So to have the opportunity, you know, with the leadership really of our premier, Fury and Premier LeGo, to say, this is a new day, it's a new world, can we do something together where neighbors we should be able to do something if it makes sense for both of us can we do this. Being in the role that I'm in, I was afforded the opportunity to be a primary participant in figuring out what's possible between us. So when you consider that I grew up in this province where that's the psyche of the two, your whole life, everybody around you, there's been such angst about this. And so I think that we have the opportunity to participate and to see something come to fruition through our hard work that really changes everything for us for the next 50 years. It is an honor. It is a privilege, but it's not something that we were gifted. Like we earned this moment. And I'm just so happy to have been a part of it. Yeah, can you talk a little bit about, you know, you say it's going to change everything for the future? What's that change going to look like? Because it really will change. So right now, as the majority owner of that plant and the dollar value, indivitance that goes back to the province is less than 20 million a year. And it would have continued for the next 17 years, that's when the contract wouldn't. Right. In the first year, there'll be hundreds of millions of dollars that will go back to the province. And that actually started January 1st of this year. You've got to get definitive agreements. They'll be a retroactive payment. But then within 10 years, it's about a billion dollars a year instead of zero essentially. So for the first 17 years of this new relationship, there'll be 17 billion dollars back to treasury instead of almost nothing. Right. That is huge for a very small province. And that number grows every single year after that. So this is truly province changing financial benefit just for the existing plant. In addition to having a new contract for the existing plant that extends out, it makes sense for Quebec to to 2075. We're going to build new assets in Labrador. Well, in excess of 30 billion dollars worth of new construction. And therefore, the economic benefit that comes with that. And then Quebec will get, you know, the majority of the power that comes out of that. But we will get also because of all of the assets together. We're going to get about four times the power from those that all those assets combined that we currently have. So we'll have additional economic benefit and growth that can happen associated with that. So new contract, brand new pricing, starting now. And then, you know, tens of billions of dollars worth of construction access to power. It is really, it is, it is, it is astounding what we're going to be able to do to change everything about the province. And really, the region and I would argue the country, right? Right. And, you know, given that we're talking, for example, about the previous contract that's five decades ago. These are not short term assets, right? When you're talking about building new plant. This is generations to come. It's generations to come. And, you know, start with what we've seen in this industry. A concern that has been floated in our province, which we always knew was going to be concerned. So we've engineered in solutions to the new contract go forward is, you know, how are we going to price the electricity now go forward? So for the existing assets, we're essentially tying tying the price to several markets as opposed to a fixed price with an escalator or just a single market, just see the cross border market into the United States. We're tying the price, you know, some proportion and that's to be negotiated to several markets because we have no idea what the industry is going to look like. Nobody does. I mean, who knew about tariffs? Who knew how much electrification was going to have an impact five, 10 years ago? So we certainly don't know what's going to happen over the, over the long term. And so we had to do something that would allow for the value of these assets or the search of falls itself to change over time with what the value is in the market. So we're going to attach us as like a mutual fund we basically described as instead of attaching to yourself to one stock or one investment or attaching ourselves to several stocks so that it really does float with the value in the market. Right. Right. With the market being Quebec's replacement cost, Quebec's new supply cost, cross-border process. All of those things will be part of the formula without both developed price. Yeah. Okay. Well, that kind of pretty novel. It is. It is very novel. One of the things I asked folks that come on the podcast, Jan, at first about their journey. So I'll make the same joke when you were a little kid on the playground. Did you always dream of running a company named Nyslund Labrador Hydro? No, I don't know why you're doing that. What's your journey? Yeah, I have, I'm from a very big family and the youngest of eight kids. My second oldest brother is an engineer. Some cousins that are all of the mere engineers. My sister's husband is an engineer. So engineering had a presence in my life, but who really knows what engineering is until you're kind of into it. But it just because of some of my academic ability, I was encouraged to do this kind of a path and then so did engineering. And then when I was graduating engineering, Newfoundland Power at home, which is a Fordist company, they hired me and put me on civil engineers. They put me on the construction of a very small hydro plant. The first one that had been built in a long time. Oh wow. So that was appealing to me. And so I did that. It was a little six megawatt plant in here where we're talking about church of falls, 5400 megawatts. So the book ends of that are pretty. Which plant was that? Rose Blanche. Okay. On the Southwest Coast, close to Port of Asker. So that was a great experience. And then I stayed with them for almost 13 years and then took a small detour to the airport authority at home. They were undergoing a bit of construction, gave that a go. And then I came back to the electricity industry, almost 11 years ago now. And I came to the Crown Corporation, so Newfoundland, I'm a little hydro. And I think I've really found myself there. I did not know how much I would find satisfaction and drive in providing a service back not only just the electricity which is super cool But back to the people of the province. So I get a lot of satisfaction and drive and incentive In trying my best to deliver for the actual residents of the province. Yeah And again, you know because they listen or may not be familiar with The the situation of the circumstances could you talk a little bit about the kind of a critical role that Nuffin Lennon Labrador hydro plays both from Economic standpoint, but also I mean it's it's part of the fabric of the society, isn't it? Yeah, I mean so we're not a big province 540,000 people I think the numbers are these days. We're essentially in every community You know we're in remote communities that are in not interconnected You know communities that have kilowatts of load. Yeah, but we're also the major generator in the province and the major transmitter And then we take the power when we sell it to Nuffin Lennon power It was a private company and then do most of the distribution we do some But so so we are and we've been there for decades. So we have a significant history Both you know people employed in every community essentially, but also just just just providing for that essential service in the province in every area every reach That truly does reach every single home in the province whether we do the distribution do for the part of the distribution We've generated most of that power and transmitted most of it But certainly We go much we outbound our borders as well Churchill falls which we run and is in Labrador. It supplies Quebec with 15% of its power. Right. That's a huge percentage We're selling down into New England. We're selling down into New York. So you know, we have an incredible role within the province and then financially, you know, we're we're returning value back to the province But then we have a significant reach well beyond our borders as well. So we're quite proud of that So we you know, we're here because of the the faces of the industry for National Electricity Month June 2025 But last year your company was also recognized by electricity Canada with our first ever extraordinary service award And that had to do with as we termed it for the the bravery and innovation in the face of catastrophic wildfires The Churchill Falls team at Newfoundland Labrador Hydro has been awarded our first ever extraordinary service award for the listener Maybe could you describe a little bit about what that extraordinary circumstance was because it really was unprecedented terms of the challenge that was being faced absolutely This was it was new for us. I mean every province has experienced wildfires incredibly devastating in many circumstances But this community Churchill Falls, which is a company on town. So Hydro owns the town. We own the houses We own the school. We own the grocery store. We run it in support of the plant So everything to do with that community. We're kind of the mayor as well, right? Like we're on the town Everything to do with the town. So that means the spouses the children there are responsibility as well Right Now but fire services is very much a provincial responsibility One of the things that we have done is we really do foster a really strong relationship with government And I think that the outcomes of of how we were able to work with government To get it to see some of the specifics about the fire last year is really because we do have a great relationship with our provincial government And it's so important Just because of who we are and in this instance it really proved out So we were having we're monitoring wildfires like everyone does every year in the region Along with government and the wildfire was approaching the town and the pace and the speed at which it was moving was astounding and I believe the What we ended up doing was sort of a two-phase situation we were preparing people We actually had done a desktop exercise what if we had to evacuate what's that going to look like? So we had done a lot of preparation But then the fire was approaching and we said okay, that's it Folks in the town have to get out and so we evacuated This was the first time this planted this town had been evacuated Since it had been in you know really in place since the early 70s, right? And so we're talking 50 year 50 plus years So then um then it got to a point but we had left about a dozen or I can't remember as a dozen or two so it doesn't So people back just core operations and a couple of core security just to keep the plant running But then we're like it's not safe and so you know between us and government I mean you had this 50 400 megawatt asset and we had to walk away And it was really really tough and it wasn't just tough to think about Protecting the asset you had to think about their homes But the life of the people that stayed behind obviously meant more Knowing the implication if something happens to the plant you have all of Labrador that would be without power Yeah, because Labrador supplied it yeah 15% of Quebec is supplied with it if you had a catastrophic effect So we were still you know with government and with other partners from across Other provinces helping deal with the fire But we we took the all of the employees out they went to give us back But what we did was we implemented engineering solutions urgently To help us monitor the plant and be able to have some sort of control and some form of control And it was um it was really Disimpressive just to watch how this all happened When all of these folks were also still really worried about their homes you know that because that's where they lived Sure And so it was uh it was really impressive just to see everyone pull together The ingenuity um how they prioritize things how we care for each other We really care for our employees and their families and their children all that as we as they were you know Moved and we had to leave them out of town for a period of time It was it was it has been one of the highlights of my career to kind of see how we pull together But how we still um kept things uh functioning And um and care for the people great and justifiably i think Recognize by yeah yeah yeah So um I want to thank you Jennifer for taking taking a couple of minutes Out of your data to chat about this and once again Congratulations for for you know being being Recognized by your peers As you know for your your your your leadership In their space and congratulations on being one of the faces of the industry in 2025. Thank you Well, I think I'm I'm a face that represents many So you're never you never achieve the kinds of things that this organization achieves alone So this is really representative of a lot of really good people. Thank you. Thanks My next guest on the podcast is Dan urban director of procurement and sass power First off welcome to the podcast and congratulations on being One of electricity candidates 20 25 faces of the industry Francis. Thank you. What an honor it was to be nominated and then of course to be picked by your esteemed panel It's an absolute privilege and that and I thank you very much for that Well, listen, uh, let's let's jump right into it because I got to say you know when the team Initially said to me. Oh and and you know one of our faces at the industry is somebody who makes a supply change Interesting and sexy. I said you gotta be kidding Supply change into something how I describe myself. Thank you. Yeah, that's what I do But you know honestly kind of where we are right now In this particular point in time talking about supply change is very relevant It's been you know top of mind when I'm talking to to members when I'm talking to CEOs It's been you know, it's got to be really kind of since since COVID-19 Supply change has been on top of mind of everybody and then now of course With trade issues popping to the fore so how crazy has it been being in the supply chain space the last couple of years Yeah, it's it's been untenable at times certainly But you're absolutely right friends is supply chain has been thrust to the forefront of a lot of leadership You know focus and and we take that really seriously. I think that supply chain enables our our companies and enables our industry But we've been a little bit in the background just making sure that our projects are being executed on time on budget Making sure that our suppliers are being supported and in advocated for but in moments like these As you mentioned the pandemic and certainly with uh, you know our Our trade challenges with with several nations um Leadership is being is being looked look to from us. I love being someone that can offer some light in a very dark tunnel and It's seeing the impact of what supply chain can really do locally and across Canada. It's such a huge opportunity So I I like to not lament and and say these are hard times for us. I think these are elevating our ability to influence really good good outcomes, right? So um It's it's a positive situation for us and I've I've appreciated the the agency it's it's offered Yeah, yeah, yeah, because it is you know as you know, we we said it is certainly a challenging times supply chains are in the spotlight Um, not simply because of the you know, just the challenges that we've seen for the last several years from the timing standpoint The Ross border challenges as well oddly enough today um, you know, I'm I'm catching you Probably you're in Regina. I'm in Regina. Yeah. I'm in Washington DC down here actually talking about, talking about trade issues and so on. But yeah, you said there's a positive side of this. So let's talk a little bit about that. Because I think you've got some pretty interesting stories in terms of what's been done to promote supply chains within candidates, to promote some partners that are local. Why don't you unpack that a little bit for some of the folks? Well, first of all, I deserve zero individual credit. The amount of energy, amount of community that comes together to grow our supply chain domestically and locally is a huge group. And it starts with our suppliers. The innovation that comes from the supplier community is really undeniable. And all we really have to do is harness it, allow for adoption of that innovation to grow within our organization. So what I'll say is that local suppliers, Saskatchewan suppliers and Canadian suppliers do great things. And too often we spend a lot of time worrying about just our own specific needs as an organization, as a province, as a region. And when you really start to collaborate and work together, you can create those positive business cases where companies in Canada can start to invest in themselves and really kind of grow their own capabilities and capacity to serve not just us, but everyone here. So there's only one way that you can really insulate yourself from supply chain risks. We learned the hard lesson during the pandemic. There's a lot of deprioritization going on our industry. We all use the same suppliers, but we don't all have the same specifications. So a lot of people were finding suddenly we were competing against each other. Buyers were competing against each other for priority. The only way we can only protect ourselves from that is by making sure that the companies in our country and our provinces are actually there for us in prioritizing us. So it's Saskatchewan because to some degree Saskatchewan is really unique as a power utility community because we have a huge geographic region, a very small population and derived from the population density in our province is different than it is in many other provinces. But that doesn't mean that our supply chains are any less complex. My friends at Hydro Quebec and in Ontario and BC, we buy the same things. They just buy a bit more of it because they have a lot more people that have to serve than we do. Right. Yeah. We all have the same kind of complexities and there's amazing supply chain leaders across our country. But how can we start to buy the same things? How can we start to have kind of more intentional conversations with the supplier community in Canada so they can start selling us what we need and we can rely less on out-of-country manufacturing, out-of-country providers. Right. So that's kind of the focus that we've been going after right now. In Saskatchewan, we have a long history of growing domestic suppliers. We buy our transformers and our wire and cable and our structures for our power pulls. We buy all that here because we put an intentional effort into growing those industries within our own province. And because of that, they gave us that resilience to survive these moments. These hard times from the pandemic and trade conflict. So I just want to keep I want to keep fostering that, but I want to do it as a country. And electricity Canada, your organization, Francis, is an amazing organization that helps us have those conversations. So perfect. Hey, I want to unpack a couple of those and talk about maybe a couple of specific examples. But before we get to that, I got to ask you and it's the silly question that I ask everybody comes on the podcast. Then when you were a kid on the playground, did you always dream of working in supply chain? What was your journey? Tell us about your journey. Well, thanks for asking. I will say this. When I was in university, I have a couple of business degrees, but when I was in university, there wasn't even a supply chain discipline. You know, there is now. I actually, I get a chance to go and speak to students nowadays that aspire to work at SaaS Power and supply chain, which I love because I really, there wasn't even a class in my entire undergraduate degree about supply chain. I was a marketer. I wanted to sell things. I wanted to create products. And it actually, it took me to another provincial crown utility at SaaS Tell. SaaS Tell is different than SaaS Power. They are a government crown, but they compete against world, you know, multinational, you know, telecos and cell providers and all that. I wanted to sell a consumer product. So I was a marketer. That was what my education was in, but I just really wanted to be in a leadership position. I aspired for leadership at that time. An opportunity came up to join to join the procurement function over there and be a manager of procurement. And trust me when I tell you, I had no idea what that meant. I had to, I wick a pdf what procurement was before the interview. You know, I had no idea and I went into that interview. I thought I aced it. I did not. But, you know, there wasn't a lot of people. As you said at the very beginning of this conversation, making supply chain interesting and dynamic. And I think you said sexy ear words, not mine. That was the case back then. I don't think there's a lot of people that are going for that job. So I became a procurement manager, knowing very little about procurement. And within about three weeks, I was in love. I realized that supply chain is really what I wanted to be. As a kid on the playground, I wanted to be a businessman. I wanted to have six cell phones in my pocket, buying and selling and, you know, all that kind of stuff. That's what I thought I would be when I grew up. And honestly, supply chain really checks a lot of those boxes. I was going to say that's basically what you're doing. Yeah. Yeah. But what I really love about my role here is, I mean, I could work in private sector. I believe that that would be interesting too. I've always worked in public sector because I have this mentality and I share this with a lot of the leaders in my organization, Rupert and Pandy, our president. He talks about this with confidence. You know, having that public servant kind of mentality, that really, that really floats my boat. That really is what kind of gets me up in the morning. I love that I have the ability to do good, prudent procurement work in my company. But the impacts have a huge impact on my province. We're a big economic impactor. And, and I love that too. So that's why I've really stayed and focused on public sector procurement and grown. And so I jump over to SaaS Power several years ago as it's the largest government purchasing entity in the province. And we have, we have some real juice here. We have some real capacity to make positive impacts in our province and across our industry. So that's my journey. I wanted to be a businessman, start as a marketer, took a job in procurement because I saw the word manager more than I saw the word procurement, honestly. And really decided, well, this is for me. And that was about 20 years ago, at this point. I've been in procurement for a long time. And that's, I've developed this, I call myself a procurement nerd because I really just love the function, the business function of supply chain and procurement. Yeah, cool. Okay, hey, let's, let's talk about some some specifics. Maybe some of the companies that you've been able to work with and partner with. Tell me about, and I see in my notes here, a company called Breck Construction. Well, there, there are one of many companies that we've had the pleasure of really partnering with. And then watching, just just getting out of their way and watching them, you know, innovate and be intuitive with what we need as a company, what our province needs and what other customers there needs and just see them grow. Breck is, is an amazing organization. And they're, they are actually led by an owned by a woman. And SaaS power has a focus. We've had a focus for a long time on indigenous engagement and supplier development. We expanded that program to, you know, just a focus on diversity in general. And we, we launched a program to focus on women owned business several years ago. And Breck was one of our kind of first women owned businesses that we targeted with supplier development. And, you know, in that time, I take no credit for the work that they've done. And Bobby, Linda, President of their organization has done leading that organization, but they have, they have really aspired to grow their capabilities and expand what they do for us from subcontracts and smaller scopes of work to being primary contractors and leading important, you know, maintenance agreements for us in our power plants. And they have expanded, they work in other provinces now, which is truly what I'm looking for. I love, I love being a seed that is that investment that allows local companies to, you know, invest in themselves, but I don't want SaaS power to be their only customer. They're, they're, their entire focus. I want them to really broaden. So they serve a lot of people and they serve a lot of provinces and a lot of my power utility friends. Because then they really, that that's really when you see the, the rocket field go into them growing their capabilities, right? So they're a real success story and Saskatchewan and I'm brought outside of our, our province too. And really, all we really did is just intentionally partner with them and make sure that they were prepared to bid, prepared to understand what our scope of work really looks like. You know, I have a great supplier development team on my team that are focused on these Saskatchewan suppliers, Indigenous suppliers and mental businesses. We really partnered with them and we really joined with them and said, you know, we want to improve your successes. We want to put you in a position to win and and they, they, they grab the brass ring and ran for it. So. Wow. Now you mentioned Indigenous procurement as well. That's been, that's been a, a focus and, and I think a pretty big story for, for SaaS power hasn't it been? Yeah. So for, the better and for, for more than 12 years now, we've had not just a focus to, to prioritize indigenous supply. growth and development in our province. But it's not just my team's goal. It's my whole company's goal. It's actually built into our scorecard at a corporate level. It's what my executive hold me accountable for instead of the other way around. And that's really allowed us to to kind of unlock the true potential. And I can think of so many stories where we sat down with an economic development firm from an indigenous community or maybe a tribal council, a group of indigenous communities with just a conversation about, hey, we have an intention. We have workers, we have a desire to grow. What kind of business should we get into right now? And so that's power. We connect those dots and we say, well, this is an underserved area of our business. We don't have a lot of local or indigenous participation. Lower barriers to entry so you can get going on this. And let's start and let's build some momentum, give smaller scopes of work and to see those grow into bigger. And I can think of 10 years ago, those conversations and now I'm working with companies that are huge organizations that have hundreds of employees and do this for not just as power, but many, but many communities. So we every year we set a target for indigenous spend. And every year we exceed that target last year we set up the high water mark. The last year also in partnership with my president and my executive vice president, we made a commitment that we're going to spend a billion dollars over the next 10 years with indigenous communities. And I've every reason to believe that we're going to accomplish that much sooner than 10 years from now. So we're doing great things and it really starts and ends with the innovation of our indigenous communities and partners that never cease to amaze me with where they are able to pivot and take advantage of where there's a need and they stand up businesses, they acquire companies, they partner. And it's truly a Saskatchewan success story and I see it across Canada quite frankly as well. Right. Now as we look to the future there's talk of of nuclear being part of Saskatchewan's future. What's that doing for really for for you and for the team at SAS Power when you're thinking about supply chains? Yeah, it's such a privilege to work at SAS Power because we're not that big, you know, so I get to be in charge of the procurement of everything and certainly the supplier development of everything and that certainly includes standing up a nuclear organization. You know, there's something we're investigating, we're studying, we're aspirational about right now. We think that a nuclear future in Saskatchewan makes a tremendous amount of sense. But there hasn't been a new greenfield, new nuclear organization established in North America in decades, right? So becoming the first new nuclear organization in a very long time, working with a national regulator, forging partnerships with communities and regions that we don't currently have, you know, those kind of partnerships with. It's a huge opportunity, but I'll tell you my province is so excited about the economic impacts. You know, my province is full of suppliers that do great work in our industry. They don't do a lot of great work in the nuclear industry and they love the part of that nuclear supply chain. Our friends over in Ontario and New Brunswick and certainly in other regions in the North America, we're talking about creating, you know, a pan-Canadian supply chain, a pipeline for supplier growth. If there really is a nuclear renaissance, you know, a foot, if there really is a real opportunity for nuclear to become broadly adopted across our nation and across our continent, we're going to need to have a lot more people supplying that and working in that sector as well. So it's an honor. It's a privilege to try and build a nuclear supply chain and introduce a lot of companies into the supply chain mix. And I have a lot of confidence that we're going to be able to do it. We build a lot of power plants in Saskatchewan and Western Canada and I don't see why we can't be building a lot of nuclear power plants. And then you factor in where does uranium come from? A tremendous amount of uranium comes from the very mineral rich province of Saskatchewan, right? So there's a lot of natural synergies with their fields coming from and our ability to not just build nuclear power plants here but to help Canada build nuclear power plants across our nation. Yeah, yeah. And the other thing, of course, that's been taking a lot of oxygen in the room has been the tariff issues and U.S. trade uncertainty. So maybe for the listener, can you talk a little bit about what that is meant for you and for supply chains? If you had to be thinking about this differently because of the kind of the place we are right now with respect to trade uncertainty? 100%. I'll say that I have two missions as the leader of a very complicated and large supply chain here in the middle of Canada, which is a prudent management of my supply chain is always my job. How do I make sure that I'm paying fair market value and I'm delivering those input costs into my company that keep our rates down and keep energy affordable and reliable for my province? That's my mission. That's my goal. That's what I do here. But also how do we align underneath our government and serve, certainly, across Canada as a unified force on policy? How do we say it's not okay that these levers of international trade are being used to harm or hurt or disrupt? Having an integrated supply chain with United States is and has always been a really good way for us to insulate ourselves from supply chain risk. It makes a lot of sense. As far as what's changed for us, I'm very happy to prioritize Canada and Saskatchewan in growing suppliers. We've been doing that for a long time. This isn't new for us already. It inherently makes sense to work with local suppliers where you can and inherently it makes sense to work with suppliers that are from the United States where that is prudent to do so. But what I will say that was really kind of shocking. Not only did this happen kind of quickly and I don't think it was particularly well anticipated for obvious reasons. We didn't really understand the downstream implications of our supplier supply chains. When I say I, in Saskatchewan and at SAS Power, I don't work with a lot of American companies. I do work with a lot of Canadian companies that have American ownership. I do work with a lot of Canadian companies and they have supply chains that are heavily integrated within United States. I've had a conversation with a great many of our suppliers and we have thousands of suppliers at SAS Power. We have thousands of suppliers at any power utility company. A lot of them have told me they're struggling with the same thing. They don't exactly know the downstream implications of US trade disruptions. So prudently managing procurement, that's hard already, trying to enact policies and processes that make sure that Canada is strong and resilient and resistant to these types of disruptions. That's a lot harder to do when I can't just run a quick report on my system and say these are the companies that are American and these are the companies that aren't. But it's a huge opportunity, again, for us to say it is important for us to understand the downstream implications and just how where there is risk when these kind of disruptive things happen. So I think maybe we were a little bit too comfortable with not knowing this stuff and I think this has been a catalyst that will last for a very long time now, probably forever for us to really say it's not just where are you from, it's where is your supply chain from as well, factory not into our decision making too. Right. Hey Dan, listen, I want to thank you for taking the time to jump on the podcast to chat a little bit. And you know, you delivered on proving that supply chains can actually be interesting. Thank you. I love it. Yeah, well, and it shows. And you know, once again, congratulations be for being selected basically by, you know, by your peers as, you know, as one of the recipients of our 2025 faces of the industry. Congrats and thanks for joining the pod. Francis, thank you for your leadership and for your organization. Electricity Canada is great work. I certainly appreciate the committee that I'm part of the supply chain committee. Eric and Jay and those guys from your team are excellent and they all deserve credit for supply chain leadership and I'm honored to be part of it. Great. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it. See you soon. Bye. And our third guest today is Mohammed Innozai, Engineering Manager EMT Studies, Independent Electricity System Editor, IESO. Mohammed, first off, congratulations on being named one of the faces of the industry for 2025. Thank you so much. That's a privilege. Well, I think for the listener, let me start with the obvious question EMT. Okay. All right. So we're talking about electromagnetic transient and the work that you did particularly on the first comprehensive electromagnetic transient roadmap. So for the non-engineers out there, can you explain what electromagnetic transient and what a roadmap for EMT is? So I will take step back, I will say like you know the power system so far has been mostly like traditional generation like a nuclear hydro and now we are facing a new wave of new technology solar wind storage and they are all interfaced by inverter so we call these inverter based resources or IPRs if you hear that so yeah our traditional modeling tools basically they were good for the uh brief years generation of resources because their performance was dictated by physics you know how the machine was built yeah but as we enter faced more or as we interconnected more of these new IDRs we started to see issues like happening in places like california and texas where they are losing gigawatts of power for faults maybe like 300 kilometers away from the ibr they are reacting other faults and they are tripping and the question okay but we did our studies but the problem is the tools that we have they are not suited for these kind of resources so they're based upon the technology of what we were using 50 years ago to generate as opposed to today exactly so new technologies they require new tools and these ibrs the performance is not based again on the physics it's based on the firmware the codes that's embedded into them okay so that's good and the bed thing the bed thing if you cannot model that you don't know how they will behave you assume they will behave like traditional generators which is not the case but if you can model it then you can predict the performance and you can actually enhance their performance they can provide so it's a mix of blessing if you model it then you can get superior performance if you don't model it you get unexpected bad surprises and again like we had so many events in North America and Europe so the EMT basically is enabler for these technologies okay electromagnetic transient tools the good thing about them they come whereas you can embed these resources you can get the firmware put it into the software predict their performance exactly down to the microseconds level you can also our traditional tools they are used they're only based on the 60 hertz which is the fundamental frequency but these resources many of their problems they happen at non-60 hertz sub synchronous oscillation sub synchronous oh well yes of course sub synchronous yes so our tools they cannot capture that but EMT because our tools were built for 60 again and they were built for that for the reason because the existing technology was all 60 hertz but now that's a new era so we need new tools and basically we learned from other jurisdictions when we started our efforts in Ontario to get you know our procurement efforts to increase our capacity and energy supply in Ontario like we did more proactive approach okay we are adding many of these resources but basically we know these resources can be good and can be bad depending on how you study them on how you model them and that's why we went was the EMT so when I was like you know tasked to start the EMT initiative at the ISO like two and a half years ago we didn't even have a software license in the building so we went ahead we got the software we built like we developed the team of experts now we embedded the ISO into our process because it's not just I'm going to change everything we have been doing for the past 40 years and just go and change it doesn't work like that you have to change the process you have to do the change management there so we did all of that we did the validation studies for three gigawatts of storage technologies in Ontario we built one of the largest EMT models in the world so basically what we were doing we were doing plant-level studies studying specific plant now we are building a model for the Ontario system for the entire Ontario system that's the good thing about EMT the bad thing is EMT is very computationally intensive as you can imagine because you are simulating small-time step running you know all of these firmware into one computer program so we are like in parallel with that we are getting two super computers 96 core each all right running them I'll say if you're just running this on VMs does number it just wouldn't work you couldn't spin up enough virtual machines to be able to do this but now we are doing that we are building we are cutting the system into parallel cases we are working with MHI minitoba hydro international they are the developers of the pscats software software using so we went directly to that developer we worked with them we built our system we divide the system into parallel cases so that we can run it and again this is considering in Ontario so far just the traditional machines we have 400 chin-vators in the modern that's significant computational burden so and the good thing is this was done in house like you know all the expertise for that our team now it's in house all the work has been done in house we are building that expertise locally here in Ontario so and I think we are doing so well that now we are starting to influence the industry so now like in the nerf get drafting teams I am participating I was going to ask about that because you're not doing this in a vacuum right this isn't just ies so you've got the the other ISOs and the and the RTOs and you've got nerc that's been looking at these sorts of questions so how do you work with nerc you're part of the drafting team yeah at dyes all like you know we have that mentality instead of waiting for the standards and waiting for others to decide our future yeah we go ahead and we decide our fate ourselves right we influence the process we bring our requirements there and that's what we usually do like you know like I've participated in coupled drafting teams like multiple people from the ISO like PRC 30 PRC 29 and now in mord 26 these are all standards so we are bringing our expertise there we're bringing our requirements there and we are also trying to shape the industry for the future right and not just the nerc like the i3bli p2800 standard sure we are also in that that like coupled people from the ISO there so you want to make sure when the standards uh finally do get developed they're they're consistent with the work that you've already been undertaking they meet our because basically the world like we usually on tell you we have stricters like more strict the standard than the nerc we usually say that nerc standards are the floor right the same yeah we can always go and we usually go but now we are trying okay let's increase you know that floor for everybody yeah because we are all connected in the eastern interconnection it doesn't it doesn't make sense if we have more strict standard than someone else absolutely because we are all in that together see the major average we recognize the interconnectivity and exactly yeah yeah we're only as only as reliable as so we can't like you mentioned we can be an evacuum we have to work collectively with everyone we have to raise the bar for the entire industrial and I think that's what we are doing in Ontario and the ISO yeah hey uh something I ask everybody in mohamad that comes on the podcast is about their journey uh so the my joke to you is when you were a kid on the playground did you always dream of being an anti specialist what was your journey to your role today at the ISO yeah uh yeah that's actually I used to dream when I was four I used to dream like you know but not about you TV was apparently there was the TV at the high like I was thinking like how these wires you know would power the entire house and I was very curious about that and then even when I went to high school you know my interest started to shift so I became into electronics building power supplies your kids you know playing with all the magnets and then I'm like okay and then I got into programming you know I'm like from the old generation started with basics and then G C plus plus I did all that and then I went into engineering and now actually that's dream work for me because you know you see now the best of both fields are coming together yeah you are having still the power system but it's powered by all of these electronic devices yeah I be ours yeah which are programs to give you the performance so it's the best of both worlds coming together yeah so like literally it's my dream job yeah my child almost like like bringing hardware software together exactly and then that basically what motivated me like I went I did my PhD at the University of Waterloo okay yeah and then I took I worked it for three years in mining okay yeah so it was in David Diamond mine in the Northwest three stories and it had to do is that because it was at the time the largest hybrid microgrid in the world so it had went for so you were you were working for the mining company yes you were you were doing electrical engineering stuff and I was doing like microgrid up there we had a microgrid we have 50 megawatts of 50 MVA of diesel and 10 megawatt of wind okay so we had tons of wind penetration so that gave like gave me lots of expertise yeah I would say even more in field expertise and then I joined the ISO 8 years ago right and yeah the journey continued yeah it's kind of like back to the future now that kind of work that you're doing today is is is kind of a callback to the work that you were doing in Northwest Sarat. Yeah that's very cool listen just as a you know as a bit of a kind of a geeky question for you the the the super computer that you're going to be running this on or you're already running on what is it like let's let's let's talk specs for the real for the real nerds out there what is this what is this system that you're running it's a thread stripper nine AMD thread stripper nine gripper yeah nine 96 okay, but we're getting two of these and we can interconnect them in parallel So literally ending up with nine line one ninety two are using some protocol called Infinity band so we can use that protocol to run pscad over two computers without much communication right overhead Yeah, so and then The rest of the specs like I think the Hard drive is for terabyte. We don't need a lot of storage space. Okay, there am we're processing as opposed to yeah, there is a significant actually 512 I think okay, take a bite of brand and The VGA cord yeah, unfortunately, I can't play any games there. It's very We don't need VGA like a GPU processing part. I think we went with the you know standard one we didn't Expand on the VGA, but But then there's also the you know the you know like the work that goes into the background like building that system big system and then Cutting it in chunks because you know when you parallel process the power system. It's not that Simple because something that happens at that end of the line. It impacts the other end of the line sure when you doing parallel processing that's not the case so yeah, how you do that? That's you know the tricky part so you have to basically consider the propagation delay There is lots of math and lots of theory that goes behind that so I have to go to transmission line where the I don't want to get into the width but where the transmission delay is significant that you can decouple post systems and then they are you can Parallel process then so you know you like and it makes sense something that happening in Bruce County You know doesn't impact the generator in Toronto for example, so yeah, there is Physical meaning for it and there is also the math behind it Yeah, and then we put all of that in one software and then you know we set it up and then Literally after we get this radio like you run Like you click and you get the EMT results for the radio system not just for a single plans, right? Well listen, I I want to you know Congratulate your once again in You know being for being honored as one of our the faces of the industry for 2025 being recognized by your peers for for your Leadership in this space so congratulations. Thank you so much. Thanks for taking the time to sit down and chat. Thank you For those that have been with the podcast since the beginning and those that have joined along the way Thanks for listening tune in for future episodes and please take the time to rate the podcast on whatever platform you use to listen And let me know what you think of the flux capacitor You can find me through our website at electricity.ca on LinkedIn and on Instagram as the Brad Bradley Until next episode Let's continue the electricity conversation on our Facebook page on Instagram and at electricity dot ca You