Chartwell Honors Interdependence Through U.S. and Canadian Utility Collaboration
ATLANTA – Chartwell Inc., a leading provider of utility industry research and thought leadership in support of key customer journeys, marks this month’s celebrations of Canada Day and U.S. Independence Day by honoring the interdependence of the North American electricity grid and the important role that all utilities in North America play in ensuring the grid’s reliability, safety and security, delivering the energy that powers the lives and livelihoods of all North Americans.
A unique and longstanding tradition of North American utilities is their eager willingness to collaborate and support one another through sharing best practices, hypotheses, challenges, lessons, and resources.
Grid interdependence
As extreme weather events continue to grow in frequency and ferocity – from heat domes and wildfires to hurricanes, bomb cyclones, floods, and ice storms – mutual assistance is a visible and powerful example of utility interdependence and collaboration. As noted by the Edison Electric Institute and Electricity Canada, the voluntary partnership of North American electric utilities to lend skilled power restoration workers and specialized equipment to assist one another during major outages is a hallmark of the industry and an essential component of power restoration and contingency planning. For example, when crews from Ontario, Canada, caravanned to Texas following Hurricane Beryl, they earned the gratitude of distant neighbors, the respect of peers, and the pride and loyalty of their own crews and customers.
Chartwell harnesses this spirit of collaboration to realize its mission to connect utilities to solutions (often other utilities) to improve customer satisfaction and operational efficiency by facilitating direct collaboration between and among utilities. Many utilities from the U.S. and Canada comprise the membership of nine leadership councils: Outage Communications, Emergency Management, Billing and Payment, Vulnerable Customer, Business Customer, Customer Experience, Electric Vehicles, a Directors’ Strategic Council, and an Organizational Resilience Executive Council.
Through these councils’ research, webinars, and conferences, Chartwell facilitates thousands of hours annually of peer-driven collaboration and consultation from strategic innovation to tactical problem solving among electric, natural gas, water, and other utilities from Investor-Owned Utilities, Crown Corporations, Public Utility Districts, municipal utilities, and co-ops.
From Hawaii to New Brunswick and British Columbia to Puerto Rico, and the prairies and Great Lakes in between, Chartwell proudly celebrates this ongoing interdependence of U.S. and Canadian utilities.
Contact: IS Dunklin
