Interview: Nancy Tower

Nancy Tower President & CEO Tampa Electric

Why has investment in cleaner, more renewable energy been such a focus for Tampa Electric?

The biggest factor is that customers want it. When thinking back over the last few years, the number of people focused on a cleaner environment has increased exponentially. This is symbolic of the focus citizens and our customers have on environmental stewardship, and that is not going away. We are very happy with our progress. I think it’s our obligation on behalf of customers to demonstrate that clean energy is not only our responsibility in terms of an environmental perspective, but also from a cost perspective. We are focused on both of those things simultaneously.

How would you respond to the argument that clean energy is not yet cost-effective enough?

It is our job to ensure that our generation portfolio is the most cost-ešective for customers. Over the long term, we have carried out extensive cost modeling to ensure we can meet these expectations. In the next number of years, we will add more solar capacity and our generation will include more small-scale methods combined with battery storage. This doesn’t come without hard work and we need to find the right ways to keep costs low. This involves finding the right land close to our transmission infrastructure, ensuring suppliers are providing competitive prices and eŸcient cost management. Costs have come down, but we need to ensure we tightly manage this.

What new technologies are you implementing in the area?

We believe battery storage is a part of our energy future. The technology is new, and we’re not ready to deploy that on a large scale until we figure out the true impact it will have on our system. We have put in place a battery storage project this year near our Big Bend solar project, which will give us really good information on how solar and battery storage interacts with our system.

Tampa Bay, like many regions in Florida, is focused on reducing its environmental impact.

The Florida government is also examining ways to make infrastructure more resilient, but this comes at a significant cost. “While the total cost statewide has not been determined, experts say that hardening Florida’s infrastructure will require tens of billions of dollars, with at least $8 billion in the three-county Tampa Bay region alone,” according to the Tampa Bay Times.

Another initiative is in monitoring the impacts of rising sea levels, a matter which Pinellas County Environmental Director Kelli Hammer Levy took into her own hands. There was no sea-rise tool that considered linkages between bridges, sewer lines, evacuation routes and other infrastructure until she created it. The tool is now required for county projects and recommended for other development.

And the private sector is also getting involved in these initiatives. Strategic Property Partners is a developer with six projects under construction, three of which are new. In the buildings, the developer has been adapting to the dangers posed by rising sea levels by elevating the entire sites, putting critical systems up higher in the buildings — 30-some feet up in the buildings for the most part. Green roofs have been installed to absorb storm water runoff.