Avangrid’s Adam Helman describes how climate change is impacting emergency response teams in the power sector.
Adam Helman has spent his entire career in emergency management. But after working for the New York State Department of Health during the COVID pandemic, he wanted something new.
So in 2023, Adam moved from responding to a public health emergency to responding to the climate emergency, in addition to other hazards utilities have dealt with for decades. Just two years into his role as director of emergency services for the energy services company Avangrid, he’s already seen a number of back-to-back emergencies caused by everything from winter storms to gas leaks.
This week on With Great Power, Adam shares with Brad some of the ways that Avangrid’s emergency response operations are evolving as intense weather and other hazards put more physical and mental stress on first responders. They also discuss why meteorologists play an increasingly vital role in utility emergency response, and how utilities are integrating new threats, like wildfires in the Northeast, into their planning.
With Great Power is a co-production of GridX and Latitude Studios.
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Credits: Hosted by Brad Langley. Produced by Erin Hardick and Mary Catherine O’Connor. Edited by Anne Bailey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor. The Grid X production team includes Jenni Barber, Samantha McCabe, and Brad Langley.
Brad Langley: Adam Helman has spent his entire professional life in emergency management, but in early 2020, his career took a terrifying turn.
Andrew Cuomo news clip: Today, New York City Department of Health is going to initiate emergency hospital measures. Every hospital has to identify retired nurses and doctors. Now we're going to stop elective surgery as of this Friday. Let's start to free up those hospital beds.
Brad Langley: Adam was working as a director of emergency operations and planning for the Center for Environmental Health in New York. It was a challenging job under normal circumstances, but when COVID hit, it became brutal.
Adam Helman: From the public health emergency management perspective, COVID was a tremendous challenge and a lot of very passionate individuals put their bodies on the line to try and do the best they could to protect the residents.
Brad Langley: Adam wasn't stationed in New York City at the time. He was actually in Albany, but working through the pandemic, it still took a toll.
Adam Helman: Coming out of COVID, I think especially on the emergency management side, there were a lot of folks who were looking to close the book and open up a new chapter, if you will.
Brad Langley: Adam was one of those people. So after almost eight years with the New York State Department of Health, he left in 2023 to become Avangrid's director of emergency operations.
Adam Helman: So my role is really overseeing our operational components of our emergency management department, ensuring that our company is prepared to respond to any emergency.
Brad Langley: Adam says that most of those emergencies are weather-related, but not all of them.
Adam Helman: We've had in the last couple of years different interesting confluences of events like severe winter storms into the solar eclipse that occurred last year or an earthquake coming off the back end of a winter storm.
Brad Langley: Last fall was particularly tough in the large service areas covered by New York State Electric and Gas, also known as NYSEG, and Rochester Gas and Electric.
Adam Helman: Just prior to Thanksgiving, we had a significant storm and we had over a hundred thousand customers out. We went straight from that into a gas incident and then into another winter storm that occurred on Thanksgiving.
Brad Langley: Managing back-to-back emergencies like these can be exhausting, but supporting customers who have suffered devastating losses from a storm—it's the kind of meaningful work that drew Adam to emergency management in the first place.
Adam Helman: That's the aspect that I fell in love with: how much positive impact you can have on people who really need it. This is a service field. You are there to help individuals go through what can be the most devastating week or day of their lives as they're dealing with a disaster.
Brad Langley: But that service comes with a lot of sacrifice, especially for frontline workers at Avangrid and other utilities across the country.
Adam Helman: It could be Christmas Eve. It could be Christmas morning. It could be any holiday. And when they get the call, they say goodbye to their loved ones and they come to work.
Brad Langley: That willingness to sacrifice comes with some serious mental health risks, and with disaster-related stressors likely to become more intense in the future, Adam sees prioritizing mental health as a vital safety issue for his team.
Adam Helman: I think mental health is not something that we can take for granted or think that it's just naturally going to happen that folks are going to be willing to raise their hand and say, "You know what? I'm not doing okay right now and need to take a step back."
Brad Langley: It's something Adam also has to keep in mind for himself.
Adam Helman: I had a moment this last fall with the one storm into a gas emergency into another storm where by the eighth or ninth day I realized I'm no longer at the point where I need to be to be effective in my role, and I told my boss, "I need 24 hours to shut down. I need you to take over." And that can be a scary thing to realize.
Brad Langley: This is With Great Power, a show about the people building the future grid today. I'm Brad Langley. Some people say utilities are slow to change, that they don't innovate fast enough. And while it might not always seem like the most cutting-edge industry, there are lots of really smart people working really hard to make the grid cleaner, more reliable, and customer-centric. Today my guest is Adam Helman, director of emergency operations for the energy services company Avangrid. We talk about how climate change is impacting emergency planning, why meteorologists play an increasingly vital role in utility emergency response, and how Avangrid is working with universities and partners to better prepare for the future, including the threat of wildfires in the Northeast. But first, I asked Adam about some of the technological tools he relies on to do his job.
Adam Helman: Take a hurricane, for example, because it's a longer lead-time event that we deal with pretty regularly. We will start looking at the forecast from seven, five days out, utilizing our external weather vendors, utilizing the public sector weather systems through the National Weather Service, like the National Hurricane Center, local forecasting offices. And one of the things that makes this a little bit unique is we also have in-house meteorology. So we utilize all three of those sources so we can start to wrap our heads around resourcing, and as we get closer to the event, start to utilize what's called outage prediction modeling, which is a fancy way of saying AI or machine learning-driven impact analysis based on the forecast. So what those models do is they tell you, "Okay, the weather appears to be doing this in this area. The computer model thinks it's going to cause this many incidents, this many customers to be out and in these rough areas."
And that's another tool in our tool belt to really look at what we think the event's going to do to our system. How is this weather? How are 45-mile-per-hour winds and two inches of rain? What does that really matter as far as impacts on our assets and our customers? And that really gives us a heads-up to know how many resources we need so once the sky is clear, we can go to work as quickly as we can. And so that's always what we endeavor to do. So we use all those data points that I mentioned, plus decades of institutional knowledge from some of our leaders who've been around for a long time and seen probably more storms than they'd like to count, and utilize all of that in our tool belt to really make the best decisions that we can and go out and get the resources that we need.
Brad Langley: NYSEG's most recent emergency resource plan has come out. How are utility emergency response plans changing in response to climate change? What differences have you seen in the time that you've been there?
Adam Helman: So every year we update our emergency response plan. We have regulatory requirements to submit the plan to the state of New York on December 15th each year, and we go through a couple-month revision process with our regulator partners, and ultimately the commission approves the plan in the spring. So the commission approved our plan a month ago or so. So we do have an updated emergency response plan. From a threat and hazard perspective, I think what we are doing is taking a look at how our company's threat profile may change in future years to bring new hazards that may not be directly at the top of the pile into focus as a concern where we need to start doing more to prepare for those events.
Brad Langley: Are response teams growing in size? I mean, the playbook maybe stays the same, but is the amount of people you need to execute that playbook growing?
Adam Helman: Yeah, I think that's a fair statement. I think the more often we respond, the deeper our bench needs to be to ensure that we're prepared to respond to it. I think there are a couple of aspects to that. One, I think it's very important from a capability sustainment perspective. We have a tremendously experienced team of leaders in this company, and it's our responsibility to make sure that we're passing that knowledge base down to the younger generation to be prepared to take over if and when they retire or leave. And so we are constantly trying to keep the bench depth deep enough to make sure that that information isn't lost as someone walks out the door. But I think from a scale-of-response perspective, we also need to make sure our bench depth is deep enough because in order to sustain span of control, which is another concept of emergency management, we don't have too many people reporting to an individual person or too much on one individual's plate. We need to be able to grow the response structure with people to meet the needs of the incident. And so yes, from a numbers perspective, we are constantly trying to grow our response roles to make sure we have that sustained capability to deal with any level of incident that we may face.
Brad Langley: And you mentioned that emergency response professionals are coming from different walks of life, whether with college degrees or not, they've been in this space maybe at a local level or state level. When you think about constructing your team, are there certain backgrounds or skill sets that you're really focused on incorporating to have a very well-rounded team?
Adam Helman: Yeah, I think when you think of emergency management, you think of incident management, right? It's the flashiest, coolest component of emergency management—managing tactical operations and putting out the fire that's burning. But that's realistically a small component of everything that we do in emergency management. And so when you're building a team, you have to find individuals who excel at all of the other areas as well. You have to find individuals who excel at planning. Planning is an incredibly critical component. It's the only way we start off the response working from the same sheet of music, and so it takes a special kind of person, I think, to be really interested in writing 200-page documents that take you 12 months to build, and you have to work with dozens of stakeholders and go through extensive review processes and everything that goes into writing a comprehensive emergency plan.
It takes a special kind of person who is good at writing and good at conveying potentially complex theories into an easy-to-understand and fluent manner. And so you have to find individuals who are good at that, finding individuals who are good trainers to go out and teach people what is in the plan—that's its own skill set, right? Not everyone is a good trainer, not everyone's a good teacher. And so you have to find individuals who are good at being able to come up with a scenario and build an artificial event that your response team can respond to that's robust enough to really practice and stretch and stress your response structure. And not every one of those has to be emergency management classically trained individuals. There are a lot of backgrounds that can lead you into being good or having the intangible skills that make you successful at that.
Brad Langley: You mentioned earlier having the meteorologist on staff. How do you interact with the meteorologist? How are they working with emergency managers, and is that a growing team? Is that becoming more important to have a full team dedicated to meteorology within a utility?
Adam Helman: Yeah, I view it as incredibly important. I think our meteorology team within our emergency management department is really there to be able to take very complex meteorological forecast terms and all of the science that's baked into understanding if it's going to rain tomorrow—we take it for granted because we open up an app on our phone and it says it's going to rain on Thursday. Like, "Oh, okay, it's going to rain on Thursday." But understanding the incredibly complex math that goes into understanding that it's going to rain on Thursday and being able to take those concepts and bring them down to a decision maker's level, right? It's so easy for us to communicate past each other when an engineer is talking to a line person. And so we need to be able to communicate at the level of our decision makers. And so I look to our internal meteorology program as that translator, right? The translator between the meteorologist at the National Weather Service and our response leader to figure out what's the uncertainty in the forecast, what's the best-case scenario and the worst-case scenario, help me paint a picture so I can make the best decision that I can.
Brad Langley: Avangrid is an affiliate of the Center for Weather Innovation, Smart Energy, and Resilience. Tell me about that project and how you're contributing to it.
Adam Helman: Yeah, so WISER is what's called an IUCRC, an Industry-University Collaborative Research Center. And what that means is it's a conglomeration of university research centers—and in this case it's the University at Albany and UConn—and a series of industry partnerships. So utilities and other private companies that are in this space who pool their money together into a research arm and then direct the universities to carry out research that meets our needs. It's a really good opportunity for the industry to drive research that is going to ultimately turn out to be operational products that improve the way that we manage the grid or respond to emergencies. And WISER is really focused on renewable energies and climate impacts and severe weather. And so a lot of the research that they're doing is tying back to outage prediction models or more efficient generation using renewable energy sources or research projects in that realm. And so I think it's a really good opportunity and way for the universities to learn about our needs and hear from the industry on where we think their research should go, and then ultimately end up with products that we can take into the field and improve the way that we're managing the grid or responding to emergencies.
Brad Langley: As someone who lives in California, I unfortunately know how wildfire risk is a growing and real concern even in parts of the country where it hasn't been traditionally. How is your work changing or evolving to incorporate wildfire risk within the Northeast?
Adam Helman: I think this is a hot topic, one that we are taking incredibly seriously, one that we are looking at comprehensively, and the California utilities have led a really good roadmap into how they've responded. Now, a lot of us who are in other parts of the country who are tackling this not for the first time, but really looking at it right now, are taking a look at that roadmap and figuring out what makes sense, what's feasible for Avangrid, what makes sense given our risk profile today and where we expect it to go in the future, and what's feasible to implement. We're not looking at it just from a risk and response perspective. We're looking at it from an engagement perspective, from a system planning perspective—what is the whole picture here and what should we be doing to tackle this evolving risk?
Brad Langley: So it sounds like you can use the work that utilities in, say, California have done, but there are going to be different factors that guide your response. Is that correct? So how much do you lean on what other utilities do versus really customizing it for what your needs are going to be based on the region that you're in?
Adam Helman: Yeah, I think there's a lot of national conversation around this, and I think the utilities in California and others that are well-experienced in this are helping to lend their expertise into things that they've learned over the last couple of decades. And then I think for, say, utilities in the Northeast, it's looking at that model and looking at our risk and frequency and all of that and figuring out, "Okay, here's what they do. They're dealing with this on a weekly basis. We may deal with it on a less frequent basis, but the risk is not zero, right?" So what can we bring over? What investments make sense? What dual benefits are out there? What can we do that is going to mitigate risk to wildfire, but also has impacts on storm response? Vegetation management is a great example of this. Veg management both reduces the risk of weather-related outages and reduces the risk of wildfire points of ignition. And so there are, I think, avenues and things that we are looking at that will provide dual benefit, but we're balancing that with what we expect the risk to be.
Brad Langley: That's smart. Are there any technologies that you're either currently using or evaluating to mitigate wildfire risk?
Adam Helman: Yeah, I mean, I think, again, from a forecasting perspective, you can have the best emergency plan in the world, but if you don't know you're at a point to activate it, then you've missed your opportunity. And so forecasting is an incredibly important component of that. So understanding current risk, understanding what the forecast is going to show for the next three days as far as wildfire risk or fire weather risk is important. And so there are products out there that we are looking at to increase our ability to forecast those risks, right? At a more granular level, forecasting risk is great, but if it's too broad, you limit your ability to take actions because you're seeing risk over a region, not an individual area. So we're investing in products or looking to potentially invest in products that would increase our granularity in our forecast for fire weather.
Brad Langley: We call this show "With Great Power," which is a nod to the energy industry. It's also a famous Spider-Man quote: "With great power comes great responsibility." So Adam, I'm curious, what superpower do you bring to the energy transition?
Adam Helman: That's a good question. One that I have not considered previously. One of the things that has made me successful in emergency management throughout my career so far has been, I think, my ability to create and foster relationships. And I think that's an incredibly important component to emergency management because when we deal with disasters, you're dealing with individuals who are stressed, at their wit's end, dealing with an incredibly difficult task in front of them. And I think being able to have really good working relationships with individuals both internally and externally allows us to respond efficiently and provide the best service that we can. Our crews are out there shoulder to shoulder with local responders, with fire departments, with DPW staff, with local elected officials. So that relationship with everyone who is at that table is critically important to make sure we're all working in the same direction.
Brad Langley: Excellent. Adam, thank you so much for your time. I really enjoyed our conversation.
Adam Helman: Me too. Thanks, Brad.
Adam Helman is Director of Emergency Management for Avangrid. "With Great Power" is produced by GridX in partnership with Latitude Studios. Delivering on our clean energy future is complex. GridX exists to simplify the journey. GridX is the enterprise-rate platform that modern utilities rely on to usher in our clean energy future. We design and implement emerging rate structures and we increase consumer investment in clean energy all while managing the complex billing needs of a distributed grid.
Our production team includes Erin Hardick and Mary Catherine O'Connor. Anne Bailey is our senior editor. Steven Lacey is our executive editor. Sean Marquand composed the original theme song and mixed the show. The GridX production team includes Jenni Barber, Samantha McCabe, and me, Brad Langley.
If this show is providing value for you and we really hope it is, we'd love it if you could help us spread the word. You can rate and review us on Apple and Spotify, or you can share a link with a friend, colleague, or the energy nerd in your life. As always, thanks so much for listening. I'm Brad Langley.