Sustaining
Quality of
Life
By John Mahoney, High Expectations
International.
John Mahoney
Retired from Entergy Nuclear in
2013, John is now a principal at High
Expectations International, a business
and management consulting firm.
Mr. Mahoney holds a
BBA from Northwood
University and an
MS in Management
from Troy University.
He has more
than 35 years of
experience in utilities
including substation
construction, power
plant start-up and
power productions.
He worked for
Science Application
International
Corporation in their energy sector
supporting infrastructure engineering,
information technology and
telecommunications. John has worked
as an innovation leader, business
developer and project manager. He
is certified as a Project Management
Professional (PMP) by the Project
Management Institute and is President
Emeritus PMI Mississippi Chapter. He
authored “Project Results in 10 Steps –
A Pathway For Mastering Any Project”
and regularly speaks on project and
program management, volunteerism
and leadership. He is the Incorporator
of the NGNP Industry Alliance Limited,
an industry consortium promoting the
commercialization of High Temperature
Gas-cooled Reactors. He is the Division
Chair for the American Nuclear
Society Human Factors I&C Division.
John is also on the executive steering
committee for Nuclear Hybrid Energy
Systems supporting the Idaho National
Laboratory.
Utility decisions for plant closures
include competition from wind, solar
and natural gas; lower than expected
and eroding demand affecting revenues
and growth outlook for the future;
expenses from current regulatory issues
and industry events that require analysis
or retrofit, repairs and rising operating
costs; and regulatory environment that is
indicating future tightening of regulation.
Utilities are currently changing their
portfolio mix due to the low cost of natural
gas and new generation of wind and solar
resulting from Government incentives
and programs. Revenue pressures are the
result of slower than expected power de-
mand as they try to manage eroding prof-
its due to increased regulation of coal and
nuclear and weather
conditions that affect
seasonal
revenues.
Utilities are redis-
tributing the load to
assets that have been
converted to natural
gas or focusing their
efforts on uprating ex-
isting assets in lieu of
building new plants.
Generation oper-
ators are seeing lower
than expected require-
ments to build new
generation for peak loads and are being
successful managing load using existing
generation assets and demand-side man-
agement programs for consumers. Retro-
fits and improvements to existing plants
have remained a solid investment since
capacity can be incremental and matches
slow growth better than new and large as-
sets that require billions of dollars of in-
vestment and can put entire company at
risk.
Utility executives are still spending
capital, but are investing in projects
that provide operational efficiency and
include three major areas of spending
and investment: 1) next-gen customer
engagement; 2) advanced data analytics;
and 3) grid optimization.
Customer-facing capabilities that
improve the customer experience and
provide capabilities to predict installation
and restoration services (operational
analytics) are focused on younger
customers using mobile devices to
keep current and manage their accounts
[including bill payment processing].
They are taking advantage of the lull in
load growth to modernize other parts
of the electric systems to help them
manage the new reality of wind and
solar generation management as well as
personal “self-generating micro-grids”
that are popular in some parts of the U.S.
that reverse customer electric meters and
require credits to electric customers from
electric distributors.
The industry has been built on
survival of thefittest and the future looks as
though this will be a sustaining conviction
for the future. In the 1990’s utilities
were focused on industry consolidation
with asset purchases to get bigger and to
isolate themselves from cyclic pressure
resulting from economic pressures, and to
allow investment in an asset portfolio that
has mixed technologies and fuel mixes.
Larger enterprises with larger portfolios
have been able to manipulate their assets
to remain profitable, but recent disturbing
news of good performing nuclear plants
being shut down for economic reasons
indicated trouble for the industry. While
some sites have been closed due to plant
material issues, recently Vermont Yankee
and Kewaunee which are owned by
different operators have been targeted
for closure because of their lack of
economic viability in the marketplace.
Others closure such as the two-unit San
Onfre plant in California were fueled by
material conditions and improvements
gone bad with large investment required
to repair and restart operations. Their
fate seems similar to that of the Trojan
Station that was closed early due to a
combination of major investment due
to failing equipment, economic risk and
cheap replacement power from other
sources. Survival in the future will
require not only effective operational
performance and reliability, but also will
require convictions from energy policy
that will sustain nuclear as one of several
alternatives important to the security and
sustainability of the nation. The long-
term public good will be serviced by
including nuclear power assets as a part
of the national infrastructure to sustain
citizen’s quality of life.
Based upon history, we see the
utility management model transforming
with consolidation of assets through
acquisitions and long-term “operations
38
NuclearPlantJournal.com Nuclear Plant Journal, September-October 2014
