PG&E CIO Ajay Waghray on Building Trusted Data for Predictive AI

0:00At the PG &E level construct, we have created AI literacy programs that have educated 6 ,000 plus of our team members to have co-pilot and other automated training capabilities ready and ready with that journey.

0:18Peter High: Welcome to Technovation. I'm Peter High, president of Metastrategy. My guest today is Ajay Waghray. Ajay is the executive vice president and chief information officer of PG &E. PG &E is one of the largest combined natural gas and electric utilities in the United States, generating nearly$25 billion in annual revenue and providing energy to more than 16 million people in California. Ajay oversees information technology and cybersecurity with a mandate to use technology to improve safety, reliability, operational performance, and customer experience. He joined PG &E in 2020 at a pivotal moment in the company's history as it was emerging from bankruptcy, and he's helped lead a multi-year transformation centered on operational excellence and an increased data-driven understanding of the company's vast physical infrastructure.

1:02Peter High: Ajay brings more than three decades of technology leadership experience across multiple industries. Prior to his current role, he was Chief Technology Officer of Assurant, and prior to that, the CIO of both Verizon Enterprise Solutions and Verizon Wireless. In today's conversation, we'll discuss PG &E's transformation, why trusted data has become foundational to safety, and how AI is creating new possibilities across wildfire prevention, grid reliability, and cybersecurity, among several other topics we'll cover together. Ajay, welcome to Technovation. It's great to speak with you today. It's great speaking with you too, Peter.

1:35It's great to reconnect after all this time.

1:38Peter High: I've been looking forward to it. Thank you for saying that. Today's episode is brought to you by Tynes 3B. Organizations are pushing teams to move faster with AI. That's creating a wave of AI-generated code and unsanctioned automations, leading to rising costs, security risks, and huge IT burdens. Meet Tynes 3B. a single, secure environment that enables employees to build with AI while giving IT and security complete control to run and govern that work. 3B enables effortless building. Describe what you need in plain English and 3B builds a fully functioning workflow. It uses IT-authorized connectors, meaning credentials stay protected, and non-technical teams can innovate without taking on unseen risk.

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2:54Peter High: For those who may be less familiar with it especially, could you take a moment and describe the business? Absolutely. And I think as I described that business, I think PG &E's business, I think it's the mission of PG &E that has got very much, as I started my career at Verizon, we had connecting people. And PG &E, our purpose is to really power people's lives. So what attracted me here and I covered the PG &E's role to provide energy to 16 million Californians in Northern and Central California. And we are a purpose-driven company. Our purpose is deliver for hometowns, silver planet, leading with love.

3:41And it anchors and ties all our 23 ,000 coworkers and extended contractors into a unified way accomplishing that mission. And my role as part of accomplishing that mission is technology and security leader. I'm the EVP and chief information officer enabling that mission. So it's really the technology role is to enable that mission and purpose of PG &E.

4:12Peter High: Phenomenal. Talk a bit about the team you lead, if you would, Ajay. How is it structured? The team is structured. I got both technology and security teams, and we are structured to have enterprise architecture and strategy. Then we have a group that is essentially delivering all the platforms and services for all the functions across our electric, gas, and generation, and entities supporting that role. And then we have our data and physical and cybersecurity team. Excellent. And take me back to September of 2020 when you joined the organization, Ajay. It had just been emerging from bankruptcy after some devastating wildfires.

4:59Peter High: Describe the company you found and some of the actions it was taking and that you would help lead and undertake on its behalf upon arrival. As I joined the company back in 2020, we had a reactive posture. I think we would essentially be, I think, and that was the same case for all utilities in some ways, right? In the early days, we would have an outage or an impact and we would react and go fix the situation. So as I joined in, we had a whole different situation in the California construct, I think, and especially as with this weather conditions and all of the, we needed to start building our predictive and proactive response posture capabilities to respond to this new need that we had.

5:56And then we also had multiple processes, multiple systems, hundreds of systems, and we needed to start to stabilize the environment and be able to support this in a predictive, proactive way. So that's kind of where we started with.

6:18Peter High: You've also described the necessity for trusted data as a foundation to the transformation you undertook and have been undertaking. talking. Talk a bit about the whole notion of trusted data. Define that if you would. As we look at the trusted data, I'll give examples of how much critical the trusted data becomes in the considerations of our response to all these adverse conditions. So imagine a pole that is there on the streets and having the data that is trusted and validated and accurate, be it on the left side of the road or the right side of the road, matters. Because we are combining a lot of our data elements from our weather feeds as well as our environmental data, with our asset data, and predicting all of the situations where we know exactly where the failure points are, predicting exactly where the impact is and responding to it.

7:27So having accurate trusted data becomes extremely important. Now we've been at it for several years now and ensuring that data with our as-built and and our field personnel updating the data. And we have expanded scaling from that data to create a data playbook. And the data playbook gives them rules of how they can ensure that all of the elements of the data come together. Like even imagine like an author having a book or an article validating the sources, and editors validating the accuracy and the publisher approving the publication for context and situational awareness. So we do something similar on our trusted data site.

8:15We've created a playbook that people use to validate all the elements of the data and ensure the traceability, accuracy, verifiability, setting the stage for fit for purpose, fit for decision making, and having that expanded into this automated decision-making process. I can build upon that in terms of the examples that is now enabling as we have expanded our capabilities to be predictive and proactive. We have built a continuous monitoring center. Take us a little bit more into that.

8:51Peter High: That's fascinating, Ajay. And our continuous monitoring center takes feeds from all our sensors in the field, all our smart meters. We have 5.5 million smart meters in different homes, and then combines that with grid sensors on poles and our down conductor sensors that are measuring the voltage and other fluctuations. It takes all of these data and creates a predictable proactive model that has now helped us avoid 19 million outage minutes. And just to think about that number sounds very big but in terms of what it really means is instead of hundreds of thousands of customers getting impacted, it could be tens of thousands of customers.

9:49It kind of dramatically reduces the number of customers impacted with not having power for the number of minutes and it has prevented 28 potential ignitions. Because the risk factors have completely changed now. It was not just running to an outage, now you have to predict and proactively prevent and it has prevented 28 potential ignitions, avoided 5 ,000 plus emergency response hours and generated 11 plus million of savings. And all that is relying on what we've been built over the years to have that trusted data that we can rely on to do all this machine learning and AI and analytics.

10:29Peter High: Fascinating. I'd love to build on that in a moment to talk a little bit further about ways in which you're leveraging that data, that foundation that you've established, but remarkable to hear about the value created in a variety of different ways there. I want to turn for a moment, though, if you don't mind, to the people transformation that you've enabled. I know this was a particularly important aspect to the transformation and really kind of, again, a foundational element. It's the people transformation that actually yields better possibilities from a process and technology perspective as well.

10:58Peter High: Talk a bit about that, if you would. It's all about the people. in a lot of ways I think and from a people transformation perspective I'll cover that in multiple ways I'll just cover about of course the technology and security team but I think from a broader sense especially as we evolve with the AI enablement that has come about in this journey I think having all of the people educating on educated on the current tools and capabilities of AI as as well as the technology and security team themselves being ready with applying a lot of the techniques. So we had a multi-pronged approach on our people strategy.

11:45At the PG &E level construct, we have created tools and capabilities like we have almost AI literacy programs that have educated 6 ,000 plus of our team members to have co-pilot and other automated training capabilities ready and ready with that journey. And then we have now targeted, now doing targeted training by role-based. So we have the leaders getting educated on applying the different tools so they are ready to coach and support their people. And then we are now extending that further into extending all of the people to truly be We apply the AI techniques along with the lean principles that have been one of our models of the company as we created formation where we have command centers where all of the people on a regular basis are conducting using different techniques to fool with visual management techniques.

12:45So in one second you know the status, in three seconds you know exactly what the predictions are, how we are progressing, and in 10 seconds know what actions we are taking. So we combine that with having all the cross-functional teams coming together. So the people capabilities are combining that with the lean principles that we have applied as one of the key performance playbook enablers of all the people across the company. And all that is coming together to enable velocity and speed of being able to apply these changes and automations.

13:22Peter High: Ajay, I also wanted to ask you, I know from past conversations that we've had, you've made psychological safety an explicit priority. Can you talk a bit about why and also kind of what the methods you've used to bring that about? There is the whole concept of having a speak-up culture where I think people feel safe to speak up in any meeting or any session where we have cross-functional teams coming together and feeling absolutely safe, both having the ability to engage in a dialogue to get cross-functional inputs in a very safe environment that creates an ecosystem of healthy conflict, getting all ideas to be heard, and empowers the people to feel safe and speak up and then create that environment of both feeling heard, known, loved, and proud.

14:30One of our key elements of our performance playbook is Leading with Love. And each person needs to be feel known, loved, and proud. Creating that psychological safety and that environment creates that cultural environment for us to all be together as we create all the new enablers. And we have extended that in terms of the people capability where we have one of the applications that we built was what is called the kudos application where we have people using that application that they can recognize each other's efforts and we have each person when they get recognized the other person their bosses and their bosses get a note about why they're recognizing and it's tied to our virtues of the company so it can say like I am recognizing this person because of their curiosity in the meeting.

15:28And they shared these ideas that helped me improve the outcome. So it creates that positive energy across the organization.

15:37Peter High: I've also been fascinated from our past conversations, Ajay, that you've focused on creating more joy and excitement at work, as you put it. Talk a bit about why so explicitly calling out those qualities and, again, the methods you're using in order to do so. The joy, there's a whole element of joy at work. It's such an important aspect of, like I said, the leading with love and having the... We spend way too many hours at work not to have joy at work, I think. So let me give certain examples of how people who are on a regular basis feel the joy of creating an impact. So like in our case right at PG &E all aspects of what we do is completely tied to people.

16:31It's tied to helping our customers have power when they turn on the switch light comes on. When they want heat it turns on. When they want to charge their EVs it turns on. So there's the joy of having positive impact on the customers. And from a technology and security team, enabling the co-workers to have all that joy with enabling that purpose in a way that they can do it effectively, efficiently, and then the communities are safer. And then having that impact felt creates a whole new level of joy among the people. So the connecting to the impact, connecting with the enablers, and then that magnifies the power of the impact.

17:27Peter High: Yeah, fascinating to hear more about that, leading with love, having joy at work, the kudos and recognition. Are you seeing upticks? What are the metrics that you use to evaluate the improvements based upon some of what you've described? So we have, there are a couple of ways we measure it. We of course do our joy surveys on a regular basis. And we have now started doing pulse surveys on a regular basis that connects our performance playbook, like I said, of our lean measurements and how people are feeling joy at work. And then having the, that impact of that is felt with each of the groups as they kind of learn about that they do different events like we have multiple ways we improve that score that has the positive impact on creating value for our customers communities and coworkers and I think examples we are using I talked about the kudos app and then we also have bite-sized introductions where we do have people join and each person knows the other person by introducing themselves in a lunch hour, two minutes each, getting to know each other more.

18:41So as people know each other more, all the cross-functional themes coming together to create the value becomes an absolute criticality. And then I think then as the people know each other, it creates the synergies of the progress coming about in a different velocity and the speed and outcome creation.

19:06Peter High: Ajay, you've also spoken about moving from conventional thinking towards breakthrough or possibility thinking. Talk a bit about, again, what the words mean and the actions you're taking to bring them to life. There is a... The whole notion of breakthrough thinking is how we even started out as we started out back when you said back when we joined. Even as a leadership team, we came together to create our purpose and how it comes together for the company. And I said like the delivering for our hometowns, serving our planet, leading with love. But that anchors the company into the purpose. But I think extending that into breakthrough thinking or possibility thinking space, we have come up with what we call a stance.

20:01And the stance where the company are like, everyone and everything is always safe.

20:08And catastrophic wire fire shall stop. So that creates a whole different level of possibility, connectedness of the entire organization towards that goal. So if I take on the catastrophic warfare, she'll stop. That has helped us evolve from what I call that reactionary posture that we talked about earlier into a completely connected organization driving towards the mission of a proactive, predictable organization. And if I built on that, I think we initially when we started out right in the early days when it was more like running to an outage or running to failure points to resolve versus this what I talked about on our continuous monitoring center that created this whole drive towards building capabilities like power safety, power shutoff.

21:06In the early days, it would have millions of people impacted. Now we are in the thousands with that passion of enabling that. Then we enhanced other capabilities to have different layers of protection on that space. Like we build enhanced power line safety settings, which essentially means anything that's proactive detection and shutting off of the power before failure points occur. We have evolved that into down conductor detection mechanisms. So when a wire breaks due to a tree falling on it, before it hits the ground, it shuts off. So we are doing a lot of events and mechanisms and partnerships with multiple partners on the extended areas to rally behind that breakthrough thinking or possibility thinking that what we call as our stance.

22:01So everyone and everything is always safe. That creates a whole different notion of how we are ensuring the safety on both the cyber and physical and grid spaces. So we have continuously driven proactive measures along that area. So it creates a whole different posture for the company in the possibility thinking space.

22:24Peter High: Remarkable. Remarkable. I think the whole notion of a lean construct that kind of becomes another performance playbook construct with the possibility thinking unifies it for all the people to deliver on our purpose. And now for a word from our partner, Retool, and the company's co-founder and chief executive officer, David Hsu. Every CIO I talk to is feeling the same thing right now. Their teams are building AI apps faster than anyone can track. It looks like progress, but if you're the one who own security and compliance, it's chaos. Software is running all across your business that nobody reviewed and nobody can see.

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23:47Peter High: Deploy applications safely and securely with Retool. Learn more at retool.com slash technovation. And now back to the interview. Yeah. I know you're also now undertaking a multi-year effort to rethink processes across the organization. Can you talk a bit about the efforts to date and the progress you and your team are making? Let me step back on this, Peter. that's a great question. I think like you started, where we started from, the first chapter had a lot of stabilization and getting into this from this reactive to proactive and predictive models. But in parallel to that, it's not just the technology stabilization, it's really process and data and and people, all elements have to come together in a transformation journey.

24:43So we have now, in fact, going from these hundreds of applications that are highly variable, we are proceeding on that into a much fewer set of platforms in the end state that are relying on standard processes with trusted data coming together to enable all the automation and all of the elements that are going to come with AI and automation of the new world space coming together. So we are embarking on the journey from a company-wide transformation journey. And over the next few years, we're going to look at asset work management, our human resources, finance, and all areas getting into from these variable systems into these predictable platforms.

25:30In parallel to that, we are also taking an internal IT transformation journey, which is looking at, again, people transformation, process and tools transformation to how we support it. So I'll give you an example of what I call that internal transformation is for people, by people, to people. So we came up with about 160 processes that we need to streamline. And we just streamlined one of those processes that is a contract governance process that used to take a lot of multiple steps for the people and it was just signing a contract was a big chore going through multiple levels of clearances and getting us.

26:14So we saved$1.4 million, moved it down from months to days and had dramatic improvements and that's just one process. So we are embarking on internal technology and security process transformations as well as company-wide transformation.

26:33Peter High: Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing more about that. And I wonder, what are you discovering about processes that may have evolved organically over decades that were never adequately documented? I wonder just even going through this process must lead to some remarkable revelations for you. Absolutely. I think the biggest learnings, I think, as we were embarking on was, as you know, I think on the company-wide level, I talked about serving 16 million customers in Northern and Central California, but we also have generation, both our hydro and nuclear. We have electric transmission and distribution, gas transmission and distribution, and we have all of the other functions of any organization.

27:23I think over the years each one of the organizations had developed within their own vertical orientation and thinking. So for the same process we have multiple ways of doing it. And so each one implemented a little variation to the process that now translates into the 1 ,400 applications I talked about that translate into different things as we and we have we have over the past several years retired about two three four hundred of them and we are continuing to evolve the journey to retire more and more of these applications but I think so the discovery of that is is like if you get the people together and have this whole mindset of process standardization as a journey and using the platforms out of the box and using all those tools it creates a whole different unifying that we touched on a little bit with the people coming together to create that and now you can get into simplifying it all to one way of doing things and when you have one way of doing things you can have the data supporting that one way of doing things versus going to multiple different threads of data sources and And then you have the system automation.

28:39So we are learning the muscle building of making all that happen.

28:47Peter High: Phenomenal. We've talked about the people transformation you've enacted, the AI literacy that you've put in place, the role based programs that you mentioned before. We talked about the data foundation that you have laid with your team. We've just talked about, of course, the process changes you've undertaken. And let's talk a little bit more concretely, if you would, a topic you've already broached, certainly, which is artificial intelligence, which, given the work we've described in those other areas, surely is in a better position to blossom for that foundation lead. Talk a bit about what excites you most about the possibilities with leveraging artificial intelligence on top of the transformation that you've driven.

29:28It's a synergistic and related to the AI strategy and transformation, because as we talked about, AI needs trusted data and we have different elements of the data journey going on in parallel. I'll circle back to the AI. I think in terms of the data, we have the high-far-risk areas where we're making critical decisions. We've been cleaning up that data and streamlining the processes. From an overall enterprise-wide strategy, as we do this process transformation using the platform strategy to get to fewer platforms from all the variable applications and systems we have. We also created a very targeted enterprise AI strategy, so it can help us create value now and in the future.

30:18And that strategy is anchored on three pillars. One is the foundation pillar and the foundation pillar of AI is really think about it like making sure that we provide guardrails, harnesses, and it has ensured that cybersecurity, governance, responsible AI is done as we continue that journey of AI built on a strong, governed, scalable foundation. So we're building that foundation and have where the foundation is in place we do the second pillar which is democratization. In the democratization pillar we want to make sure that we are using you're teaching all the people what I touched on a little bit earlier but I think using the tools effectively and responsibly within the guardrails so then they can kind of have that tools used in in their day-to-day lives.

31:15I think we have, and I'll get into several examples of that, but also in our lean playbook, people do their own value stream mapping. They're looking at problem solving, but as they pick up these new tools, they're able to apply it themselves and have continuous improvement mindset come about with the tools that have been taught to them and evolving that space. And then you have the whole execution is what we are calling out, that as a third pillar, and in that pillar, we have learned a lot from ourselves and our extended learnings that you want to really look at the outcomes that are tied to the purpose of the company.

31:54Is it moving the affordability needle? Is it making operational efficiencies? Is it kind of doing the wildfire resilience and mitigations? So really the big mover use cases that come about and that this big mover use case to help you build a stronger foundation, it creates value and you can use some of that value. Creation to improve the foundation that helps with the democratization. So it's almost like a three pillar strategy that feeds into itself and continuously improve. Let me build on that with a couple of examples. So if you are good with that, Peter. Please.

32:32Related to knowledge assist area, as an example. We have a nuclear power plant that we, in Diablo nuclear power plant, and as you know, nuclear power plant has got lots of operational documentation, standards, and so there's millions and millions of pages. And we leveraged the foundation. We had to have all of that captured into one knowledge artifact that is now on top of the generated AI capabilities. So all the operators and sort of taking hours through all those manuals and verifying and double verifying, now they can use this automated capability to pretty much very rapidly reach operational decisions to support the plant and review whatever they need to ask or check.

33:31It comes about at their under fingerprints and also helps with onboarding new people become easier. Very similar extensions of that would be another example that would use is in our service planning and engineering function. There's a lot of engineering standards, documentation, and having all of these artifacts of different back and forth validation between customer changing their minds on what they exactly want as we light up new loads and our engineers going through all the documentation. So thus we codified and automated all that so now they can go through iterations of this in a much easier in minutes versus weeks and then have that iterations and a lot of cases light up new customers much faster and do that.

34:24And we have several other examples of that in our regulatory constructs as we do new regulatory filings. They're able to use knowledge assistance. So a lot of progress in the knowledge assist area now including for the customer service agents we have enabled capabilities. We are both using it internally for the knowledge assistance and expose it externally with customer service agents that are self-providing the self-service capabilities based on agents that are able to, and those are able to do it at pretty much the same levels of customer satisfaction scores and automation. So a lot of use cases like that, and several of them are now self-done by people.

35:09So to that end, I can cover a little bit. We covered a little bit on the people side, how we are training, but here we have enabling the people to do it themselves with their democratization tools. So we have expanded that to doing periodic hackathons, where people do like cross-function groups of people come together and do hackathons to create a new capability faster or what we call like pizza AI parties where a group size of pizza size group comes together in a room and creates innovation. That's how we created our AI development life cycle in different ways. So a lot happening in this AI space at multiple levels with a very strong strategy and now we are embarking on big, larger use cases that will move the needle on our affordability area or speed to power and continuing the culture revolution of AI.

36:06Peter High: I know from our past conversations, you've also talked about the use of high definition cameras and computer vision combined with machine learning and continuous monitoring capabilities working together to do some really exciting things. Can you talk a bit about the intersection of some of these innovations and what excites you about that? I think one of our critical elements of predictive and proactiveness was related to the whole catastrophic Wi-Fi shall stop and everyone and everything is always safe. So I think to that end, a lot of the automations here that you're talking about are in that space of we have hundreds of 600 plus AI based cameras and AI based cameras help you detect a spark much faster than any human can and these newer cameras are able to distinguish between visit a cloud or a smoke or an ignition and it dispatches in I think several, like 19 plus minutes and we have like each case a little different but on average it's minutes make a huge difference and it is auto connected with our first responders and our response center so it gives you that lead time to auto dispatch from other agencies and support structures, all of that, and being able to proactively detect and contain those adverse conditions.

37:53We have weather stations and different meteorology data that gets fit into weather patterns and simulation models that can now predict 72 hours out exactly two kilometer by two kilometer where we have this risk condition so we can then proactively take positioning and other elements of our safety, there are multiple layers of safety coming together to protect that spaces and again, like I said, minimize the outage minutes as well as emergency response hours so we kind of minimize the impact of our customers. And the continuous monitoring, if I expand on that, it's taking data from multiple sensors, smart meters, and every 15-minute interval it's polling in the high-risk areas, the data inputs from the five and a half million meters that we have.

38:59And then we have sensors that we have installed, grid scope sensors on multiple poles in our territory. It takes that feed. It takes feed from our reclosures and other sensors within our electrical environment. So taking all of these sensors, it kind of creates the ability to predict exact failure points and scenarios. It helps in two or three different ways. If I tie it back to customers and coworkers and communities, as sort of the anchor point back as to why it matters and makes a difference. So for our customers, it's absolutely reducing the outage minutes, but also with the capability now to communicate with them in terms of exactly when they will have an outage and how long will that impact be felt.

39:59And then being able to have the predictability on that reduced impacted duration. So we have built in, again using AI capabilities right within our devices, the estimated time of restoration, which predicts a lot more precisely the time of restoration and that whole communication with the customer becomes a lot more proactive. In addition to that, for the co-workers, imagine in those adverse conditions, a co-worker has to go and when they have to detect without having all this precision they have to walk miles to see where the fault is in the night and under adverse conditions traverse the several miles of terrain to do that versus now it tells them exactly go here and take care of the problem so they're much safer in doing that and entire communities become safer so it has a absolutely like supports our purpose to deliver for our hometown serve the planet lead with love and tying it back to customers and co-workers and communities so this is what kind of completely ties down to if I boil back into another summary of the AI journey we are on it's value first and tied to the risk or communities customers co-workers and and and then governance always so we are always always mean ensuring that the cyber security governance responsible AI all that comes together governance always and scale with the results justified so as the results justified we are continuing now we have the continuous monitoring center is going to scale and expand and completely come together.

41:53And we have a command center where all cross-functional teams get together, and we see that continuous improvement. It's got 19 million minutes. It's going to keep increasing the potential ignition saved. So that's really so. So we start with problems and ask where AI can help solve it and connect to our processes.

42:14Peter High: Ajay, the emergence and growth of data centers is certainly very prominent at present. And there are all sorts of concerns floating around about the possibility that their continued growth will lead to adverse implications for the rates that are charged with people, for example. What are your perspectives on that? Obviously, you have a very strategic perch when it comes to more data centers coming online and the energy considerations associated with it. I would love to get your perspectives. Thank you for that question, Peter. I think this is an area that is very much current in the news in a lot of places.

42:52And for our customers in California, we are absolutely committed to making it affordable for them to have the service from us as essential service. And to that end, since beginning of 2024 to now, we have reduced rates four times and 23 % rate reduction for the most vulnerable customers and 13%. rate reduction overall. So I think now coming to the data center topic, I think the assertion that they're going to be increasing the rates is not quite sort of completely real because Because if you think about it, the number of assets that we have already in play can be leveraged with basic arrangements to provide the data center the power they need.

43:50A lot of the load is now becoming inference loads in localized areas that we can provide with existing capabilities we have, making some flexible arrangements with those providers to make that come together in a way that is a win-win. We can provide the power and it actually becomes rate reducing. So we estimate that every gigawatt of power that we add is a 1 % rate reducing to the base by leveraging all of the assets in place with certain arrangements that make it unique and that having to come around. So to that end, we are doing a lot of, again, we are using some of these AI and other techniques and capabilities to do cluster modeling of rates and using our existing assets and making sure we do it in a way that realizes that thing, affordable way of enabling data center load and being beneficial for our customers.

44:55Peter High: Yeah, very well articulated Ajay, thank you so much. What a fascinating story that is, the multi-levels of value that's derived from the transformation you've led. I want to double-click just a moment longer, if I may, on cybersecurity and areas you pointed out as being sacrosanct, understandably, part of the governance always point you just articulated as well. Can you talk a bit about how advances in artificial intelligence are expanding the capacity of your own cyber organization and how it leverages that to ensure that the organization safeguards its most important assets? Cybersecurity is top of mind always, and I think the threat vectors have changed.

45:39Now you have the velocity, the volume, the variabilities. All three vectors are changing in a different way, especially in the past couple years, three years now, with this AI revolution as we talked. So I'm going to step back. I think about the cybersecurity world in a couple of different ways. And one way is really tying it down to exactly what you're talking about. How are we getting more capabilities in place to detect and respond with machine speed and human judgment getting combined using all of these tools and techniques to become a whole different capability of new capabilities being combined with some new talent as well as new models and using them to combat the detection of machine speed and responding with machine speed.

46:38So we're building that capability, but in parallel to that, tying back to our mission of delivering for our hometowns and always being on, there's a concept of resiliency of ensuring our customers and communities and co-workers are always able to deliver on our promise. So when you turn on the light it comes on and heat comes on and we minimize the impact time always always setting. With that we build a lot of capability as we are responding to business to the to this what I call the continuous monitoring center or emergency operation center with responding to all these wildfire or other risk threats.

47:19And we're using the same capability to expand on business resiliency. So we are looking at detect and respond with recovery and resiliency. So how can we continue to operate and provide the service with take-down readiness? and building upon that with doing exercises of take down business continuity for all of these critical areas where we need to continue to provide power to our customers and grid operations continuing. And we are kind of collaborating across all the functions in electric and gas and generation and our teams to really kind of come up with both business continuity testing of each of the processes and then scenarios that would that could be realistic so I think the combination of dealing with machine speed with humans providing judgment on the AI side and combined with this business resilience business continuity validation is going to be the magic so we should never cite of the why this is It's all resiliency and ensuring that we are delivering for our hometowns and keeping the community safe and coworkers are able to continue to provide that enablement.

48:39The basics still don't change on this. I think we've talked a lot about our culture and how the people are an aspect of the culture and our lean thinking and leading with love, all of that coming together. And so we have this notion of led by security, owned by all. That does not change. So we keep educating all the people, getting their ownership in this space. And I'll give you an example. I think just the other day, I was talking with one of our technicians, Jesse Garcia, senior gas control technician. and he was beaming with joy as he said, like, hat, send this phishing that looked fishy to our cyber team.

49:30And that helped us with potentially a lot bigger impact that we could have had. And our cyber team confirmed that it was actually malicious and we removed it from tens of other places that it could have actually somebody else may not have picked it up like Jesse Garcia did, and it could have become a much bigger impact for us. So the basics don't change. So our education, employee readiness, and led by security to do that, and doing all these tests at multiple times, and sphere phishing, targeted testing, and education. I think the alertness of the people and the access controls and the pass, all those basics don't change.

50:13while we have to now respond with the machine speed and human judgment coming together. So that's kind of the future, but it's not about just computers and systems anymore. It's about protecting customers, coworkers, and communities and critical infrastructure.

50:31Peter High: Fascinating. As I reflect on the conversation, Ajay, what a remarkable transformation that you've undertaken and now described in the almost exactly six years that you've been with the company, joining an organization, emerging from bankruptcy, transforming the organization, people, process, technology, now tremendous innovation, and the remarkable value that you're already deriving from the change that you've undertaken. Thank you so much for sharing your story with me today. I've thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. Thank you, Peter. I appreciate it and really enjoyed having this conversation with you too.

51:05Looking forward to continuing the dialogue.

51:08Peter High: Thanks for listening to Technovation. If you enjoyed this conversation, subscribe and leave a rating. It helps more leaders find our podcast. Thank you and I look forward to seeing you next time.