The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted the rapid adoption of new technologies by U.S. utilities operating from coast to coast, but some smaller companies still struggle to ditch antiquated processes embedded in their office environments and in the field.

The pandemic forced utilities, like many companies throughout the world, to pivot quickly to allowing employees to work from home but with the added hurdle of maintaining reliable service without disrupting an ongoing energy transition.

"As much as we are focused on keeping the lights on and the gas flowing today, we can't forget about tomorrow," Calvin Butler Jr., a senior vice president of Chicago-based Exelon Corp. and CEO of Exelon Utilities, said at the virtual Energy Thought Summit, the first segment of which ran from Sept. 15-17. "We have to continue to evolve as an energy company because ... our customers are expecting us to evolve. They expect so much more from their local utility now than they ever have before."

Brett Carter, executive vice president, chief customer and innovation officer for Minneapolis-headquartered Xcel Energy Inc., said the company has been "a very stable force and we have to stay a stable force."

"Our cybersecurity teams, our business system teams, our IT teams were able to quickly roll out a number of new programs to help us ensure that we were able to communicate safely and effectively enterprisewide," Carter said at the conference, which itself was forced to go virtual. "In a crisis like this, if the power is not reliable, things get a lot worse a lot faster."

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Executives, however, said the pandemic and the top-down changes it has prompted also present an opportunity.

"While we are conserving cash, while we are delaying some work, we are also investing in strategic initiatives such as our digital transformation," said Gil Quiniones, president and CEO of the New York Power Authority, or NYPA. "We are doubling down on our enterprisewide digital investments at NYPA. Things like that I think are going to define the winners of the future."

Pablo Vegas, executive vice president and COO at Indiana utility NiSource Inc., emphasized the importance of embracing new investments in customer technology.

"If you design your processes through how you think you need it as a utility business, you're going to really miss the opportunity to deliver value to your customers more quickly and to get to them what's really the goal of what you're trying to do overall," Vegas said, admitting that the size of these complex investments "can be almost paralyzing" but they are important to give customers immediate value.

Vegas, the president of NiSource's utilities, also said it is important for companies to make profitable investments.

"The ability to quickly take [something from] concept to something that is in production and usable will facilitate the speed to which you're able to take that investment and look to seek a return on it," Vegas said, adding that a more "agile" and "on-demand" approach makes financial and cultural sense.

Paper to digital

There are still municipal utilities confronting larger challenges when it comes to adopting digital practices and enhancing the customer experience.

"Our customers want a lot of technology that we're not comfortable with," said Cory Kuchinsky, interim vice president of strategic pricing and enterprise risk management at San Antonio municipal utility CPS Energy.

According to Kuchinsky, this is why many municipal utilities tend to focus on pilot programs, such as electric vehicle initiatives, to get more comfortable with new technologies and their costs before large-scale rollouts.

But other municipal utilities are looking to adapt a new mindset.

"In the office ... it really comes down to three things: paper, paper and paper," Lincoln Bleveans, assistant general manager at Burbank Water & Power, said at the virtual conference. "We have very traditional practices, whether it be contracts [or] memos. We're still on paper timesheets and still wet ink signatures on almost everything, and that's been a tremendous struggle. ... That's been our biggest challenge, I think, is taking somewhat antiquated practices ... and making them virtual in an efficient way that people can rely on."

Bleveans added that it is too soon to tell if the utility will maintain some of the new practices it has been forced to adopt.

"Utilities are famous for boldly going where everyone has gone before when it comes to innovation," Bleveans said. "We're now trying to figure out ... what does the new normal look like? Is it a slightly smarter version of the old or do we really want to go full steam into the future, or into the present actually? It remains to be seen."

The Sacramento Municipal Utility District, or SMUD, had already begun its transition "away from paper," said Nancy Bui-Thompson, vice president of the municipal utility's board of directors. "But there were still gaps, and so this COVID pandemic really sped up that process [of moving to digital services]."

Thompson was more confident in the utility's ability to maintain new operations practices.

"This, for sure, will continue to be the future for SMUD," Thompson said. "I think now we know we are capable of doing it efficiently and quickly but also [capable of] doing it well."