The following is a transcript of the Feb. 10, 2025, episode of Public Power Now. Learn more about subscribing to Public Power Now at Publicpower.org/Podcasts. Some quotes may have been edited for clarity.
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 Brant Heap, Director of Protection, Automation and Control at Arizona public power utility Salt River Project. Brant is here to discuss SRP’s state-of-the-art Technology Innovation Lab. Brant, thanks for joining us as a guest on the podcast.
Brant Heap
Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.
Paul Ciampoli
Brant, to get our conversation started, could you provide an overview of your role and responsibilities as Director of Director of Protection, Automation and Control at SRP?
Brant Heap
As the Director of Protection, Automation and Control at SRP, I essentially lead a multi faceted electrical engineering and technology services organization. My team and I are responsible for designing, constructing, operating and maintaining the entire protection automation control system across SRP’s fleet and this includes our generation, transmission and distribution facilities. There's a lot involved here.
Paul Ciampoli
Can you provide an overview of SRP’s Technology Innovation Lab? How long has it been in operation?
Brant Heap
The Technology Innovation Lab is located here in Scottsdale, Arizona, and it's really a hub for hands on training device configuration testing. And then even some research and development and really the lab was completed in 2020 and it became fully operational about April of 2021.
It spans about 5,400 square feet and it's really modeled off of one of our 23- kV substations but about twice the size...the intent of it is to enhance our power system reliability by supporting our workforce. It does that through training our workforce and then allowing them a space that where they can troubleshoot our existing technologies as well as research a lot of the future technologies in the space where we feel like we need to go and take the power system.
Paul Ciampoli
You mentioned workforce and training, which is a nice segue to my next question for you...as I was preparing for this interview, one of the things that jumped out at to me is the fact that training is a key area of focus at the lab. So can you provide examples of how the lab is being utilized for training SRP employees?
Brant Heap
Yes, training is indeed a major focus of the lab and something that we do in there a lot. The lab really provides a central place for our employees to kind of learn our maintenance and commissioning practices of a lot of our existing environment in a safe environment. It's isolated from the grid and so it's a safe place that they can go in there and learn and develop. We conduct over 100 training sessions annually, covering areas such as performance testing, troubleshooting, cybersecurity compliance, you name it, there's a variety of trainings that we do here.
The trainings also span multiple disciplines across our engineering and field crews, so it's also a place where we'll do our apprenticeship training, training for our field crews and so really it is anything that supports operational technology. We centralized that in the lab here so that we can improve our workforce and train them appropriately.
Additionally, over the last several years, it really serves as an education place for a wide variety of both internal and external stakeholders and in various partners across the industry is what I would say. So really that will demonstrate how our protection automation control systems, coupled with our telecom, really support SRP in the overall reliability of our power system.
Paul Ciampoli
If another public power utility is interested in setting up a similar laboratory what would you say are the key considerations that utility would need to take into account prior to proceeding with steps to create a technology innovation lab?
Brant Heap
We've had a lot of interest in the lab since it's been commissioned from external parties, and one of the key considerations that I would say there is the lab is really focused on our workforce and so the intent is to get your upper leadership and your company aligned and understanding that the lab is there that will support our workforce today and as well as our workforce of the future.
So that really is aligning that vision -- I think that's one of the first steps that you have to do. It's often a struggle to to get funds to support things such as a lab. But if you can really align that with your corporate vision, goals and objectives, that is key, in my opinion. And so really then, that now allows us to foster collaboration among a variety of groups, which is one of the key components of actually designing the lab. So once you start in the design phase you have to involve multiple groups -- even more groups than you think will be -- on a on a traditional basis -- working and operating within the lab because you gain a lot of additional insight. And so I would strongly encourage that collaboration across multiple departments to make sure that you're building a lab that not only supports your needs of today, but supports the needs of the future.
You need some space that you can grow into.
Paul Ciampoli
Right. Yeah, that was actually something I was going to ask you about -- that this type of environment is not static, it's got to be flexible in terms of preparing for the future.
Brant Heap
Absolutely. And I can't say we did that perfect on everything, but we did do a pretty good job with some flexibility in there where we can adapt to a lot of the future technologies that are coming to our system. Another key component that I didn't mention earlier is location. Finding a location that really is easily accessible to your core group of folks that are going to be using this lab often is critical.
Paul Ciampoli
Brant, thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us today. I'd actually like to offer you an invitation to return as a guest on the podcast at some point in the future, and obviously we don't need to talk about the lab, although I'm sure there's probably updates that we could discuss, but I'd love to have you back to talk about other areas that you focus on at SRP.
Brant Heap
Absolutely, that would be fantastic. I would love the opportunity. One of the things I didn't mention here is some of the cool R&D work that we're actually doing in the lab here, which is a partnership across the industry.
And one of those in particular is the virtualized protection automation control.
Paul Ciampoli
Oh, could you elaborate on that a little?
Brant Heap
Virtualized protection automation control -- when you break it down, you're separating hardware and software of the traditional protection and control systems, and you're standardizing the hardware within your substations.
Then you're building that flexibility in the software. If you picture a typical substation where you have a large number of protective relays, RTUs, you can now consolidate those into a server and then through software still do everything that you do historically, but also have the flexibility to meet the grid’s need of the future.
Paul Ciampoli
Interesting. Well, that sounds like maybe one topic we could talk about further the next time you come back. Brad, thanks again for taking the time again to speak with us today.
Brant Heap
Absolutely. 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.
