descriptionThis symposium will explore diff erent aspects of preparing for and responding to natural disasters from the perspectives of resiliency, response and restoration.

continuing education certifi catesAll attendees will receive a continuing education certifi cate worth 6.0 Professional Development Hours (PDHs) by RMEL, upon completion of the course. RMEL serves a large territory in which attendees participate in a number of accrediting organizations, each with their own requirements. Depending on the certifying body you are affi liated with, RMEL PDHs may be applied towards your recertifi cation credit. Use the event brochure, and agenda to determine how the content applies to your certifi cation. The at-tendee is also responsible for verifying how the quantity of RMEL PDHs convert to your certifying body credits. Typically 1.0 PDH is equal to .1 CEU, but you should always verify the conversion scale.

daTe, Time, locaTionaugust 13-14, 2019

august 13, 20198:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

august 14, 20198:00 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.

Western area power administration1667 Cole Boulevard, Building 19, Suite 152

Golden, CO 80401 United States

There is no room block, but here are some nearby hotels. Call RMEL at (303) 865-5544 for more details:Denver Marriott WestSheraton Denver West Hotel (3.4 miles, 10 minute drive)Hampton Inn Denver West /Golden (2.6 miles, 8 min-ute drive)Courtyard by Marriott (2.1 miles, 8 minute drive)Holiday Inn Express & Suites Golden – Denver Area (2.6 miles, 8 minutes)

RESILIENCY, RESPONSE AND RESTORATION SYMPOSIUM

preparing for and responding to natural

disasters: powering Through Hurricanes,

Wildfi res, Tornadoes, snow storms,

Floods and more

SYMPOSIUM PROGRAM

preparing for and responding to natural disasters: powering Through Hurricanes, Wildfi res, Tornadoes,

snow storms, Floods and more

Tuesday, august 13, 20198:00 a.m. Welcome and introductions

8:30-9:15 a.m. Key challenges to enhancing grid resilience Jessica Lau, Sr. Technical Project Manager, NREL Power systems reliability and resilience requires successful coordination of operations, planning, and investments. Preparing for and strength-ening assets and processes to lessen impacts and re-cover quickly from hazards and other threats will ensure viability of customers and organizations. As the grid continues to evolve, as do threats to the grid, tackling key challenges remains critical to keeping the lights on. This session will explore some key challenges in power systems resilience and how research plays a role in supporting the grid.

9:15-10:00 a.m. addressing corrective action Following national emergency mutual aid assistanceTiff ani DeFore, Emergency Management Program Man-ager, Western Area Power AdministrationFollowing Western Area Power Administration’s (WAPA’s) response to Hur-ricane Sandy in 2013, WAPA developed a formal disaster response program (DRP) to better prepare for future events. Since then, WAPA’s DRP was put to the test responding to the call for National Emergency Mutual Aid Assistance following the 2017 hurricanes that caused catastrophic devastation to the electrical infrastructure of the United States Virgin Islands (USVI). Following

the event, WAPA conducted a “lessons-learned” review and developed a corrective action plan (CAP) to address the fi ndings and improve the eff ectiveness of WAPA’s DRP. This presentation provides a review of WAPA’s CAP following its assistance to the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico from the 2017 Hurricanes.

WAPA puts signifi cant eff ort into developing lessons learned and corrective ac-tion plans to ensure better support and processes in the event its asked to provide assistance in future disaster response eff orts.

10:00-10:15 a.m.networking Break

10:15-11:00 a.m. carr Fire lessons learned and strategies to mitigate severe conditionsChristine Henry, Supervisory Power System Dispatcher, Western Area Power Admin-istrationChristine will discuss the events of the fi re, responses, island situations, response of WAPA - SNR Personnel, and impacts to the USBR. She will focus on thier lessons learned, changes implement-ed and mitigation strategies on the horizon.

11:00-11:45 a.m. uns mutual assistance: response in Turks & caicos and puerto rico 2018 Larry Robinson, Director of Fleet, Land Resources and Transmission Maintenance, Tucson Electric Power CoThe 2017 hurricane season had 2 hurricanes that destroyed many of the Caribbean Islands, including Turks and Caicos (TCI) and Puerto Rico. As part of the Fortis family of companies, UNS responded to assist in

the restoration of TCI. Two weeks later Hurricane Maria destroyed Puerto Rico and UNS responded during the second wave of restoration eff orts, in cooperation with the State of New York.•What were some of the challenges in deploying staff and equipment across the country, to a foreign country, and to a tropical environ-ment.•What did we learn about our readiness to respond and how it changed our future responses.

11:45 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.networking lunch

1:00 p.m. - 1:45 p.m.gsu and Transmission resilience solutionsDavid Calitz, Transformer Specialist Engineer, Siemens Industry Inc.Some Transmission Own-ers and only a handful of Generator Owners have strategic spare transformers available for Transmission Class and Generator Step Up (GSU) transformer failures and a catastrophic failure on some of these transformers can have large fi nancial and reliability impacts to the generator and the transmis-sion owners. Having mobile spare units with multiple voltage taps and reconfi gu-rable windings (for Wye or Delta operation) available can reduce the number of spare transformers needed for a fl eet of GSUs and Transmission Transform-ers and can shorten the response time in the event of a catastrophic failure.

Many catastrophic failures also leave the transformer foundations damaged (in case of a fi re) and will most likely require fl exible options when installing a temporary replacement transformer, such that the failed trans-

former and its foundation(s) can either be replaced or repaired while the temporary unit is in service, supplying the required generation load to the transmission system. This discussion will address the typical problems/issues associated with transformer failures, possible options and fl exibility typically sought as solutions and products cur-rently available to address the situations surrounding transformer failures.

1:45 p.m. - 2:30 p.m.uas Technology for Fast outage recovery after storm damageBryon Atchison, Manager, Field Services, ThinkPowerVinod Rajasekaren, Think-PowerDallas County experienced a major storm event on June 9, 2019 that led to large scale disruption of service to more than 330,000 ONCOR customers. This unique event during the peak heat of summer had a large area of disturbance but with eff ects similar to tornadoes and tropical storms with signifi -cant impact to distribution equipment. Think Power Solutions in coordination with ONCOR crews utilized UAS technology for fast de-ployment and evaluation of feeder taps and distribution networks. Quick evaluation with availability of the drone images and videos on Think Power ONE (Think Power So-lutions proprietary Business Intelligence software) helped ONCOR decision makers in making quick decisions to ultimately being back power to customers with outage in a timely manner.

2:30 p.m. - 2:45 p.m.networking Break

*Please note that this program is subject to change. Please check www.RMEL.org for the latest

updates.

TRANSMISSION RESILIENCY, RESPONSE AND RESTORATION SYMPOSIUM preparing for and responding to natural disasters:

powering Through Hurricanes, Wildfi res, Tornadoes, snow storms, Floods and more

2:45-3:00 p.m.attendee announcementsAny registered attendee is invited to make a short announcement on their com-pany, new products, tech-nologies or informational updates. Announcements may include showing a prod-uct sample but not videos and power point slides. Please limit announcement to 5 minutes.

3:00-4:30 p.m.Transmission vital issues roundtableBring roundtable topics for discussion and/or send topics ahead of time to jamessakamoto@rmel.org. Roundtables off er a unique forum for peer-to-peer sharing of experiences, critical issues and expertise. Discussion is based on top-ics brought by attendees. Roundtables are focused on the open discussion period and provide each attendee the opportunity for partici-pation and dialogue on their particular issue. Round-tables are held in conjunc-tion with a conference and many topics presented at the conference are discussed further in the roundtable setting. The roundtable is a good opportunity to share experiences, troubleshoot problems and network with peers in a smaller, informal setting. All attendees are encouraged to bring issues for discussion and materials for sharing.

Thank you rmel Transmission committee

cHairangela piner

VPHDR, Inc.

vice cHairana Bustamante

Director, T&D EngineeringUNS Energy Corporation

scott BayerDirector, Transmission &

Substation Engineering and Construction Austin Energy

Jedd FischerSr. Project Manager

Nebraska Public Power District

Keith nixVP, Technical Services and

System ReliabilityTexas New Mexico Power

mike pfeisterManager of Scheduling &

Reliability ServicesSRP

chris pinkTri-State Generation & Trans-

mission AssociationTechnical Services and Bulk

Systems Planning Mgr.

John QuintanaTransmission Asset

Maintenance ManagerWestern Area Power

Administration

The RMEL Transmission Committee plans all RMEL Transmission events. If you’d like to send information to the committee, email

James Sakamoto at jamessakamoto@rmel.org.

Wednesday, august 14, 20198:00-8:45 a.m.advanced vegetation management TechniquesBarry Moyes, HDRRandy Rhoads, COO, PointerraHDR’s Vegetation Manage-ment discussion will help utilities position themselves for a more analytical ap-proach to collecting data, analyzing data, storing data and making actionable deci-sions from their data. Key topics will include sensor selection, aerial vs. ground collection methods, special-ized imagery Red Edge/Hyper Spectral and how this data can be used to identify species types and overall vegetation health which is a leading indicator of growth rates and fall in potential. HDR will have a co-presenter, Randy Rhoads, from Poin-terra data storage company who is a leading provider of cloud based data hosting for a variety of utilities across the globe. They will discuss some of the available op-tions in the marketplace for the storage and access of massive data sets. In addi-tion to the storage some of the available tools that are available for viewing and interacting with stored data. Whether your utility is new to a data driven approach to vegetation management or are further along in adopting these methods The topics should provide benefi t to all.

8:45-9:30 a.m.Bomb cyclone Blizzard 2019 – system impactsSage Williams, Maintenance Manager, Tri-State Generation and Transmission, Inc.Sage will be covering snow-fall related weather events that aff ected Tri-State’s service territory in all three regions from 3/4/19 to 3/32/19 with the main focus on the Bomb Cyclone dates of 3/13/19 – 3/15/19. I will be describing diff erent chal-lenges in the three regions and the teamwork that went in to keeping the lights on during the storm.

9:30-9:45 a.m.networking Break

9:45-10:30 a.m.eff ects of Bomb cyclone Flooding, the storm That Keeps giving!Scott R Walz, T&D Construc-tion and Maintenance Man-ager, Nebraska Public Power DistrictScott will show the eff ects of losing a hydro dam to several transmission towers. I will also show the pure force that water has and our ability to respond to these events. The presentation will cover completely energized and fl ooding 115KV stations to being forced to evacuate and operations center/call center at the same time of trying to restore power and maintain grid stability.

10:30-11:30 a.m.roundtable discussion and Wrap up

Transmission resiliency, response and resToraTion symposium regisTraTion Your Personal Member ID#: __________________________________________ Name: _____________________________________________________________________

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6855 S. Havana St, Ste 430 ~ Centennial, CO 80112 www.RMEL.org

Transmission planning and operations conference - august 13-14 2019Registration Includes: Breakfast, breaks, lunch, training, course materials, attendee roster and, upon course completion, a continuing education certificate.

Member full conference (includes roundtable) .............................................$345 **Student Member full conference (includes roundtable) ......................... $172 Non-RMEL member full conference meeting ................................................$595

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** To receive the student rate, you must be a full-time student at an RMEL member university. All student registrations must be faxed or called in, and a copy of your student ID and full-time class schedule are required.

Cancellation Policy: Fees are refundable if cancellation is received on or before 5 p.m. on August 3, 2019. If cancellation is received after that date, half of the registration fee will be refunded. Payments will be processed for those who do not attend or do not cancel by 5 p.m. the day before the event. To have someone take your place, please notify RMEL anytime before the event.

rmel | 6855 s. Havana sT, suiTe 430 | cenTennial, co 80112 | (303) 865-5544 | FaX: (303) 865-5548 | WWW.rmel.org