washington business
In Their Words
Spokane-based Avista Corp. began operations 128 years ago as Washington Water Power Company, when Washington was still a territory. Today, it’ s stronger than ever, working in the production, transmission and distribution of energy while making key investments in the local community. Avista is also leading the charge to rethink how cities can incorporate smart technology to improve energy efficiency and infrastructure planning, and build on the company’ s and Spokane community’ s legacy of sustainability through its partnership in the Urbanova pilot project. Scott Morris, Avista’ s board chairman and president and CEO, spoke with staff writer Bobbi Cussins about Avista’ s focus on collaboration and innovation, the company’ s recent acquisition by Hydro One and its continued commitment to the Spokane area and the state’ s shared environmental values.
How has technology influenced change within the utility industry?
The utility industry is evolving and changing. What I mean by that is the machine that was voted the most important machine created in the 20th century by the National Association of Engineering Professionals was the electric grid. That grid, for the most part, was designed to be an analog grid. We’ ve now begun a process of digitizing it, starting with transmission and generation, and finally digitizing the distribution system. Because of that, the technology you can start putting on electric grids is sensor technology, seeing things in real time, and not just with smart meters, but with smart devices. Add to that the robust communications systems we are building to support that type of technology and all the new distributive energy, which is primarily solar, it really is beginning to evolve to be a new day for utilities, not just in Spokane, but across the country.
What is Avista’ s role in Urbanova, the“ smart city” pilot project in Spokane?
What’ s really exciting for us about the Urbanova pilot project is the whole“ smart city” concept. What we decided to do was to take the idea of a smart city, which other cities are looking into, and condense it into 770 acres of Spokane’ s University District. We wanted the project area to be both wide and deep and we wanted to do a lot of experiments to truly make it a living laboratory and have it thrive around Avista’ s history of innovation and our innovation gene. We’ ve started so many cutting-edge companies that I think we understand innovation pretty well. So, we created Urbanova to find partners to look at this new, digitized world of the
Scott Morris
“ Our portfolio is extremely green and it’ s very intentional on our part to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. That’ s who we are and that’ s our legacy.”
electric grid and communications networks and see how we can use that in a way that isn’ t just for energy, but many other opportunities in a community.
What do you mean when you talk about a“ smart city” and what can it do to improve communities?
The goals of Urbanova, in partnership with Avista, the City of Spokane, McKinstry, Itron, the University District Development Association and Washington State University, are to use technology to create healthier communities, safer neighborhoods, smarter infrastructure, a more sustainable environment and a stronger economy. What we’ re asking is, can an electric grid do all these things and what do these new opportunities mean for communities? A lot of the smart city concept has to do with sensor technology connected to robust communications networks. One great example to achieve a cleaner environment is we are putting in place smart street lights that have sensors and know when there’ s people under them, so they brighten, and when no one is there, they dim. Also, Washington State University engineers designed air quality sensors that we put around the pilot project area, so that in real time the engineers are measuring air quality. What’ s been really interesting
20 association of washington business