Joe Zerdin is the kind of guy who tells it like it is. As an engineer with nearly 40 years of experience, including the past 17 with Canadian investor-owned utility Hydro One, he’s seen the ebbs and flows of the electric utility industry. He has a keen eye for when something new is afoot— so you best believe him when he says something is up.
Even after all those years, Zerdin says he’s encountering a new phenomenon, one that represents the first “real” challenge for the electric utility industry during his career. Unprecedented and skyrocketing electricity demand is testing the power grid, and utilities are forced to find creative solutions to new tests presented by the energy transition and data centers.
Zerdin encounters these puzzles daily at Hydro One, where he provides solutions for customers connected or attempting to connect to the utility’s transmission and distribution systems. But that’s where Zerdin finds excitement— in problems without clear-cut answers.
“The 3 MW distribution connection has become 30 MW, and the 30 MW transmission connection has become 300 MW,” Zerdin told POWERGRID. “We need to balance the growth of infrastructure with the sustainment of existing infrastructure. We truly need to find that optimized balance of solutions.”
While excitement fuels Zerdin’s work, he believes the electric utility industry may be in a reckoning of sorts.
Large interconnection requests, largely from gigantic data centers, will likely stress utility infrastructure and resources over the next five years. That will require utilities to work more closely with customers to integrate facilities smoothly and ensure grid stability using cost-effective “smart grid” solutions.
Data centers could consume up to 9% of U.S. electricity generation by 2030 — more than double the amount currently used, according to a recent EPRI study. In Canada, meanwhile, data center investment is expected to grow 13% by the end of the decade.
“I was always interested in providing power in the form of electricity to the masses. It was an industry that balanced theory and practicality like no other,” Zerdin said. “But this isn’t about just building poles and wires anymore.”
Last week, Zerdin joined dozens of utility leaders and technology innovators in pursuit of those solutions at a recent conference planning meeting in Florida for DISTRIBUTECH, North America’s largest transmission and distribution utility event, which he has served for the past 14 years as an advisory committee member. Committee members assessed 961 content submissions, the most in DISTRIBUTECH’s history, in what will become the technical education program for DISTRIBUTECH 2025 in Dallas next year.
As the chair of DISTRIBUTECH’s Advanced Distribution Operations Subcommittee, Zerdin is a guiding force in how the electric utility industry assesses new smart grid technology and adapts to ever-changing customer demands. He also gets the first glimpse at the challenges and opportunities facing the industry.
Zerdin noted that the interest and conversation around distributed energy resource management systems (DERMS) is only increasing, based on content submissions to the conference. That may be partly due to the expanding use cases and technology permutations related to DERMS, he speculated, including the debate over whether DERMS should be centralized or non-centralized applications, utility or customer-owned systems, part of an advanced distribution management system (ADMS) or stand-alone.
“I believe DISTRIBUTECH is a conference like no other. It’s the formation of many partnerships to provide our industry with information on how to move forward,” Zerdin said. “My growth is in the development of life-lasting relationships with many people which gives you a network of people to seek and provide advice.”
DISTRIBUTECH recently announced its 2025 Advisory Committee members, full of industry experts with valuable insights on transmission and distribution. POWERGRID International will highlight some of these committee members for their dedication and hard work in shaping next year’s DISTRIBUTECH event.
