What if a corporate headquarters could generate, store, and manage its own power—independently, reliably, and sustainably? Cobb EMC has done exactly that. Tim Jarrell, Vice President at Cobb Electric Membership Corporation, talks about the creation of a self-contained microgrid that powers their campus using solar energy, battery storage, and natural gas. Hear how this innovative project was conceived, planned, and executed, along with the project management lessons learned along the way.
Chapters
00:00 … Intro
02:45 … Cobb Electric Membership Corporation
04:45 … Self-Generated Microgrid System Project
05:43 … The Battery Barn
07:34 … The Natural Gas Generator
08:50 … An Interconnected System
10:38 … Managing This Project
12:25 … Safety a Priority
13:11 … More Implementation Challenges
14:31 … The Need for Good Business Partners
15:40 … Ren Love’s Projects from the Past
18:33 … System Testing
19:50 … Allatoona Battery Project
21:48 … Why a Summer Peaking Utility?
23:12 … Data Centers
25:44 … Project SolarBee
26:30 … Sharing Lessons Learned
28:14 … The Good and The Bad
29:28 … Leadership and Innovative Projects
30:49 … Find Out More
32:22 … Closing
Intro
TIM JARRELL: Safety again is number one. Make sure you engage the right cross-functional teams in the project. And the communication, like I said, is very important because you’ve got many people that are involved in the project. Be ready to adapt. Make sure the project aligns with your goals, your missions, and the economics make sense. That’s kind of the key things to think through, you know, before starting the project.
WENDY GROUNDS: You’re listening to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers, and we’re thrilled to have you with us today. I am Wendy Grounds, and in the studio with me is Bill Yates.
Don’t forget you can earn free professional development units from PMI just by listening to this episode. Stick around until the end, and we’ll tell you how to claim them. Whether you’re tuning in from your morning commute, squeezing us in between meetings, or just here for some inspiration, we’ve got you covered.
BILL YATES: Picture the possibilities had you fully committed to your ambitions last year. Achieving those goals, landing that dream job or stepping into a leadership role. Each day you delay taking actions amounts to a missed opportunity. Velociteach can help you get the training to make that leap.
At Velociteach we offer live instruction, over 280 hours of self-paced online education, blogs and podcasts. Velociteach is a community of leaders, project managers, and hard-working team members, here to support your growth and success. Visit us at velociteach.com to discover how we can fuel your professional advancement.
WENDY GROUNDS: We’re going to dive into today’s episode to see what tools, tips, and stories we can add to your project management toolbox. Now, what if your entire corporate headquarters could run completely on its own power, clean, reliable, and sustainable? Cobb EMC made that vision a reality. Their campus operates on a self-contained microgrid powered by solar panels, smart flowers, battery storage, and a natural gas generator, a living model of innovation in the energy sector.
Our guest is Tim Jarrell, and he is the vice president at Cobb EMC, where he leads power supply, rates, and distributed energy resource strategy. Tim has nearly 30 years in the energy industry. Under his leadership, he’s driven a 400% growth in Cobb EMC’s renewable energy portfolio, and he’s spearheaded its on-campus solar battery storage and microgrid projects.
He’s a certified PMP and Six Sigma Black Belt, and brings deep expertise in energy strategy, project management, and innovation, along with a strong commitment to his local community in Cobb County.
Cobb Electric Membership Corporation
BILL YATES: Wendy, let me give a little perspective on what an EMC is, and we’ll talk about Cobb EMC. So, an Electric Membership Corporation, that’s what that EMC stands for, and it’s where you get power. There are power companies that are out there. There are over 900 EMCs in the United States.
And we – me personally, my home – we get our power through Cobb EMC. Cobb is just the name of the county that we happen to live in here in the Atlanta area. So, an Electric Membership Corporation is a member-owned, not-for-profit organization that provides power to businesses.
They happen to be, again, they’re one of 900 EMCs in the United States. They happen to be, like, top 1%. They’re number one nationally for reliability. They’re number one nationally for restoring when they have an outage. And in Georgia they’re number one in terms of rates. So, we’re fortunate to have that.
Again, to give perspective, they serve about 200,000 customers. Some utilities – again, beginning of my career as a project manager, I worked with utilities that were large. They were nationwide, like Duke Energy, Texas Utilities, Pacific Gas and Electric, Con Edison. Con Edison, they serve Chicago. They have four million customers, so a lot more than an EMC. But this EMC, and Tim that we’re going to talk to today, they’re extraordinary. They’re really known for their reliability and how well they perform. We’re just fortunate enough to be living in this area.
WENDY GROUNDS: Excellent. Yeah, it’s a fascinating look at how bold thinking and smart project management can power sustainability at a whole new level. And we’re fortunate to have Tim actually visiting us in the studio. So, we’re really excited that we have a guest in person this time, yes.
Hi, Tim. So good to have you in the studio. Thank you for joining us.
TIM JARRELL: Thank you. Glad to be here today.
Self-Generated Microgrid System Project
WENDY GROUNDS: Yeah. So, we want to talk about Cobb EMC and all that you do. Cobb EMC’s headquarters, they can run on their own self-generated power through a microgrid system. And that consists of solar, battery storage, and natural gas. So, what inspired this project, and what’s the problem that you were trying to solve?
TIM JARRELL: That’s a great question. I wouldn’t say it was a problem per se, more of seizing an opportunity. We had a chance to develop a microgrid on our campus, which gave us a way to learn about that technology for our members, and it also created a full backup energy system for our campus. If there’s ever a major outage, we can power our own entire campus and keep everybody continuing to work on restoring power quickly to our members.
And strategically, it also let us operate energy assets. When prices are high, we can discharge those assets, and saves the money on power cost. And we can also follow one of our core values, which is innovate. And that’s one of the four core values at Cobb EMC.
The Battery Barn
BILL YATES: Yeah, that’s good. You guys are just down the road from us. And I had the chance to hang out with you, Tim, and Manish, and put eyes on this project. It is so cool. So, on the campus, there’s the solar panels, which I didn’t climb up on the roof and count them, but I know you’ve got solar panels on everything. You’ve got these – you guys call them “solar smart flowers,” so they kind of follow the sun.
TIM JARRELL: They do.
BILL YATES: That’s pretty cool. It’s almost like a sunflower. And the battery barn and the natural gas generator. But one of the things I really wanted to see was the battery barn. I mean, just at the name, I’m like, I want to see a battery barn. It’s a barn filled with batteries.
And it’s got 576 batteries that are all connected. Talk to us about that. So how big a footprint, and get a little technical with us on the electricity, you know, how much current is there there, stored in those batteries?
TIM JARRELL: Okay. We call it the battery barn because it’s kind of in a building that looks like a barn.
BILL YATES: Yeah.
TIM JARRELL: And it’s filled with batteries. That’s exactly right. It stays a nice, cool, you know, 70 degrees, 68 to 70 degrees at all times. So hot day, it’s nice to go in there and, you know, go check out the battery barn. But it’s a one megawatt, four-megawatt hour battery facility. And what that means is we can discharge one megawatt for four hours straight. The equivalent of one megawatt is about 100 homes, their annual power usage.
BILL YATES: Okay.
TIM JARRELL: So, it can power 100 homes for 12 months, if you want to do a comparison that way. We put it in place for, again, to be part of the microgrid system, to power our campus during a major outage, but also for economics. We can charge it up at night when power is cheap, and we can discharge it during the peak hours when power is more expensive.
BILL YATES: Mm-hmm, yeah. That’s nice. And I know that part of the project, the solar and the battery storage, you guys finished up in 2020. Is that right?
TIM JARRELL: That’s right.
The Natural Gas Generator
BILL YATES: Okay. And then after that, that’s on the campus and also on the campus, you followed that up with a natural gas generator.
TIM JARRELL: That’s right.
BILL YATES: Talk us through the, kind of the specs on that. That was 2022 when that finished up?
TIM JARRELL: That was 2022.
BILL YATES: Okay.
TIM JARRELL: So, it was the next phase of our microgrid. It’s a natural gas generator. It can produce also a megawatt of electricity. Again, it can power about a hundred homes, looking at it from that perspective over annual basis. It’s in a 1,500-square-foot facility. It’s got some great ventilation, and it’s pretty quiet. And safety is number one at Cobb. So, we put all the safety features for both the battery and the natural gas generator. And they’re close to each other as part of the microgrid system on our campus.
BILL YATES: Yeah. Yeah. The power goes out, you’ve got self-generated power for running the headquarters, running the operation, so that you can get people like me, customers, back online more efficiently. So, you’ve got enough either stored in the batteries or the gas generator can produce where you guys are pretty much self-sufficient.
TIM JARRELL: That’s right.
BILL YATES: That’s awesome. Hence the name “microgrid.”
TIM JARRELL: Microgrid, that’s right. It’s kind of, you isolate yourself kind of from the grid when you need to, but you can still power everything we need to power.
BILL YATES: Yeah.
TIM JARRELL: And that’s important during a major outage because we can stay completely focused on restoring powered out members as quickly as possible.
An Interconnected System
BILL YATES: Yeah. So, everything is interconnected. We had a conversation with a power company that is producing those microgrids for, I think it’s mostly Caribbean, you know, some of the smaller islands that, you know, they’ll have these devastating hurricanes or other storms that’ll happen. And they thought, okay, if we could come up with microgrid technology there, then that would benefit some of those communities.
I see the wisdom in it, and it’s so cool to see Cobb EMC kind of taking a leadership position in that and coming up with an interconnected system.
So, I’m trying to think from a technical standpoint, how is it interconnected? Because I’m walking around, I’m a dummy, I’m not a double E, you know, I’m not an electrical engineer. I’m walking around the campus with you guys, and I’m seeing, okay, there’s the solar panels. My brain can think how a battery works. So, everything goes into the battery and is stored. And I can see how, you know, in case of emergency, we flick on the gas generator, and we have generation going on there, too. How do you get all those systems to talk? How do you interconnect them?
TIM JARRELL: Well, it’s not magic. It does take technology. So, we do have a centralized energy management system. It monitors the generation, the load, the storage in real time, and it helps us make decisions when to charge and discharge the battery, especially if we’re producing more solar than we need for the campus usage. It helps to make decisions. Okay, this is a good time to store that excess solar, you know, into the battery system.
So, there’s a lot of forecasting involved in the decision-making. We can also turn the generator on and off, like I said, on those peak days. It makes sense to discharge the battery and run the generator, which is more energy than we need for the campus, but it lowers our peak load, which saves us a power cost with our power contracts.
Managing This Project
BILL YATES: All right. So, Tim, from a project management perspective, what was your approach that you guys took as you had really this multi-phase system, big part came online in 2020, another major part in 2022. How did you plan and coordinate all the activities that were going on on the campus? Because this is the campus. You’ve got operations. You’ve got support administration right there. Yet you’ve got these major projects going on. How did you project manage that?
TIM JARRELL: Good question. I’m a PMP and also a six-Sigma black belt. So, I like a plan, the more details the better. And in something like this, when you’ve got a lot of technology that you’ve got to integrate, we kind of took a phased approach. We looked at the feasibility of it first. Did the economics work? Is the technology, you know, feasible for our campus?
Then we looked at the design. Designing anything around electricity is extremely important because, again, safety is number one, so you want to make sure your design is factored in, any variables, all the safety that you can incorporate. Then you start on your implementations, and then testing, test some more, and then test even more after that to make sure everything works, works properly.
And you coordinate with a lot of different departments. We coordinated with engineering, safety, operations, everyone that needed to have a piece of it was part of it. And communication is key, as we all know, communication in the project management world is one of the most important things you can do. And so, we made sure that we had all the communication channels working as effectively as we could.
We also built in flexibility, if we need to adapt along the way, because nothing goes perfect, as we know that. There’s never a perfect project so you need to plan for that accordingly. And so, we had some flexibility built in, and everything worked out very well. And we got it built and put in place pretty much on time.
Safety a Priority
BILL YATES: That’s awesome. Yeah, it’s funny. When I was in the battery barn, the fire suppression system was one of the most impressive parts of it. It’s like, you know, the safety aspects that you guys had to think through as you’re building this.
And as a project manager, you’ve got different risks that come up. You have different things that are going to be emphasized. Clearly, safety was a top priority for this project. And just seeing some of the thoughtfulness that was put into the way the facility was set up was really impressive.
TIM JARRELL: We’d ask a lot of questions about all the possible safety features that could be part of a battery system because there was definitely new technology that was being implemented in different places across the country. So, we didn’t want to miss anything regarding safety at all.
More Implementation Challenges
WENDY GROUNDS: Were there any other challenges or surprises during the implementation?
TIM JARRELL: Oh, absolutely. There was this thing called COVID that came along.
BILL YATES: Yeah, because you finished in 2020, so you had COVID right there.
TIM JARRELL: Yeah. So, COVID hit as we were in the middle of the project. We were very fortunate that we had already ordered all the equipment, and it had already been delivered. If we had not done that, we would have been like so many others. There was equipment shortages that came very quickly, and that we would have been waiting. We would not have been able to complete the project in 2020. So, call it hindsight, luck, whatever you want to call it. It worked out well for us that we already had the equipment. And so, we didn’t have very many delays because of COVID.
The other surprise, and it wasn’t a huge surprise, but it’s fairly new technology as mentioned. So, we had to spend a lot of time talking to inspectors and all that, talking about what battery technology is and talking about the safety features we put in to make sure that they understood we had coordination with emergency responders, first responders, and emergency personnel to make sure like we’ve got an emergency response plan and all that in place. And so, it was education there, and we had some great conversations with them and coordination with them. I think everyone appreciated that.
So, we spent more time doing that than probably early on thought we need to do. But again, new technology, you need to make sure you take the time to make sure everybody’s aware of what this is.
The Need for Good Business Partners
BILL YATES: I know, it’s interesting. I’ve got a close friend who has worked on college campuses and construction projects there for a number of years and overseeing those projects. And he’s talked to me just about how frustrating it is trying to find contractors who can meet the criteria to build on a college campus where the building’s going to be there for 50-plus years. Yeah, it’s not typical. It’s not typical construction.
And when you’re building something like this, you know, you’ve got to rely on vendors and partners who get it. They’re going to – you don’t have to even think about safety, you know, from their standpoint. They’re going to deliver to the degree they say they will. The quality is going to be where they are.
So, I know from a project management standpoint, just seeing the equipment that was on the campus, it’s impressive the list of criteria you guys had to go through to make sure everything was done properly, done safely. Important to have good vendors.
TIM JARRELL: Yes. Yeah. The business partners are extremely important, and they need to have the same values around safety that you have. And that’s, when we do some scoring and pick our business partners, I mean, that’s one of the things we have a lot of conversation about to make sure they are as high at safety standards as we are. Extremely important.
Ren Love’s Projects from the Past
REN LOVE: Ren Love here with a glimpse into Projects of the Past; where we take a look at historical projects through the modern lens.
This project was so massive, so out-of-this-world that it required ten years, 150 billion dollars, and the cooperation of 15 nations to complete: the International Space Station.
The International Space Station, or ISS, was born from the dream of continuous human presence beyond Earth. Inspired by the successes of earlier space missions and the desire for peaceful international cooperation after the Cold War, this project aimed to serve as a floating laboratory, hub of research, and symbol of unity above our planet.
In the late 1970s and all through the 1980s, the United States, Russia, Japan, and the European Space Agency were all creating plans to put different kinds of stuff in space – like labs and living modules. In 1993, the International Space Station was announced and then construction officially began in 1998 with the launch of the first module by Russia.
Over the next ten years, modules from NASA, the European Space Agency, Japan, and Canada were added, including living quarters, solar arrays, laboratories, and robotic systems. This process was incredible; they launched components into space and assembling them in flight. Astronauts took over 160 spacewalks to complete the construction. The collaboration required thousands of scientists, engineers, and astronauts, working across languages, time zones, and national priorities.
The station now measures over 356 feet end to end and it orbits Earth every 90 minutes. It has six sleeping quarters, two bathrooms, a gym, and scientific facilities where hundreds of scientific experiments are conducted simultaneously in microgravity. You can imagine that this was a wildly expensive project, estimates came in at about 150 Billion (that’s billion with a B!) US dollars.
So, was this project a success? Absolutely. For starters, the station has been continuously occupied since November 2000, marking over two decades of uninterrupted human presence in space. It has hosted astronauts from 19 countries, produced groundbreaking research in medicine, and physics, and materials science. But really, the ISS represents just a little bit more than project success; it’s really a triumph of collaboration, diplomacy, and human curiosity.
So, thank you for joining me for Projects of the Past, I’m Ren Love. See ya next time!
System Testing
BILL YATES: Yeah. Tim, one of the fun conversations we had when we were on the campus, when I was on there with you guys, you all talked about testing the system. Because I’m looking at it going, man, how do – how would you ever test this? It’s massive. And it’s not like you’re going to say to the entire campus, hey, we’re going to shut the power off and see if this thing clicks on. You know, that’s not something you want to do at 2:00 o’clock in the afternoon on a Thursday.
TIM JARRELL: Right. You do it after hours.
BILL YATES: Yeah. So how did you guys do the testing?
TIM JARRELL: So, it’s been – we test it annually every year, and we do that late hours, and we have backup for our power control and all that. So, it doesn’t impact the operations there. But we’ll do it after pretty much everyone has gone home, and test the system, and make sure that the microgrid kicks in, and it kicks in within seconds.
So, we do that every year. Early on, we tested it twice. Once a planned test, once there was an incident outside of our campus that impacted power flow to the campus, and the microgrid kicked in because we got alerts that the microgrid was working, and we started looking and said, “Sure enough, it is running.” And then started rescuing. And why is it running?
BILL YATES: Right.
TIM JARRELL: But it was running, and that was thumbs-up. But hey, what’s happening here?
BILL YATES: What’s happening?
TIM JARRELL: So, it was a great outcome.
Allatoona Battery Project
BILL YATES: Yeah. So, I know, you know, you had talked about an Allatoona project. There’s another substation that’s going to be even larger than the battery project that you guys finished up in 2020. 10x is what I’m hearing. Talk to us a little bit about that project, you know, why you’re following up with that one. And I’m sure things have changed since 2020 and ordering equipment and battery technology. So, what do you see now that is a change from back then?
TIM JARRELL: Yes, I feel like we’re in a great spot to go larger from a demand response perspective, meaning, like I said, if we can reduce our peak during peak hours, it’s a true savings to power costs, which is true savings to our members. And that’s just one benefit of the battery technology. It is definitely evolving. It has gotten more modular, more scalable. They don’t really put them in battery barns per se anymore. It’s more like trailers, semi-trailers. And so that’s one thing.
The chemistry continues to change. So, the battery on campus is lithium ion. The battery we’re moving to Allatoona substation is lithium iron phosphate versus lithium-ion phosphate. So, chemistries continue to change, make it a little bit more efficient, smaller. You can get higher energy density from the newer batteries, faster response times, better analytics.
So, like anything, you know, the technology is evolving each year. It doesn’t hurt that there’s still investment tax credits out there for these types of projects. Right now, the ITC will be around until the early 2030s for battery storage technology. It is recognized by the Department of Energy and the federal government as a valuable energy source. So, we’re happy for that.
It’s a project we can do joint with Gas South on projects like this, which benefits us and our members when we do that. And so, yeah, we’ll continue to see it evolve over the years and keep abreast of the technologies and see where our locations might work out well for us to do battery projects.
Why a Summer Peaking Utility?
WENDY GROUNDS: A question I wanted to ask you is, Cobb EMC is a summer peaking utility. Now, most others will peak in the winter. So why is that? Why does that matter?
TIM JARRELL: So that’s the billion-dollar question right there. There was a time that most utilities were summer peaking utilities. That’s not the case anymore. You’ve got a lot of winter peaking utilities. You’re seeing larger winter loads now for a lot of utilities and summer loads. What does that mean? That means capacity is harder to find during the winter, and it’s harder to meet those loads than it used to be. And so, price of capacity has gone up.
And basically, the difference in energy and capacity is energy is what you need to meet load. Capacity is the most energy you could produce if you needed to. That’s really the key difference in capacity and energy.
So, because winter peaks have become larger in this country, you’ve got more winter peaking utilities, capacity is scarcer in the winter, making the cost of power a lot more expensive in the wintertime than the summertime. So that’s a benefit to us being a summer peaking utility. And again, that’s really changed in the last 10 years. That used to not be the case. But it really has evolved. In my 30 years in the energy business, I’m surprised at some of the large winter peaks that we’re seeing these days.
BILL YATES: Yeah. It’s fortunate Cobb EMC can buy when the price is down, and they can sell when the price is up.
TIM JARRELL: You got it. It’s like a trading business; right.
Data Centers
BILL YATES: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. One of the things that we want to talk about, Tim, is the nasty two-word data center. It’s interesting. Data centers are such a hot topic right now as AI is exploding and companies like NVIDIA, well, gosh, I mean, AI is everywhere; right? And the large companies are investing big, big, big in it.
And at the back end of AI, you have to have these massive computers or data centers filled with computers that are computing. So, you need more compute, which means you need energy. You’ve got to keep those things cool so you need a lot of air conditioning, more energy. So, there’s the drive for energy for data centers is a hot topic.
As a customer of Cobb EMC, I hadn’t really thought about that. I think at the annual meeting, Kevin Espy, the President CEO of Cobb EMC said, “We don’t have any data center customers, and we don’t plan to.” Talk about the data center some and the impact it has on Cobb EMC.
TIM JARRELL: That’s another great question. We’re very urban cooperative. We’re very dense. So, we’re not getting approached by data centers because there’s not a lot of land in our service area to go and build a very large data center. Also, if there is land, it’s extremely expensive in our service area. But we have been approached before. We have had discussions with data centers. We have chosen not to pursue them aggressively as Kevin has stated.
While they do offer revenue, and we are in the business of selling kilowatt hours, we won’t do that at the risk of higher cost to our members. And those data centers come with very high infrastructure demands and long-term commitments. So, they have to be served by something; right?
And the big question out there is, can we build – and not we, but like the nation – can we build capacity fast enough to serve these extremely large data centers? Because the numbers are staggering what the prediction is of how much energy they’re going to need.
So, we’d have discussions with data centers. We wouldn’t turn anyone away. But it would have to make sense for us to pursue a data center and not put a risk to our members or our rates or reliability. Because we are the lowest rates in Georgia, and we have some of the best reliability in the nation, and that’s not something we’re going to jeopardize for our members.
BILL YATES: Yeah. It was interesting. I had not even thought about the cost of land, but these data centers are huge. So yeah, trying to buy enough property to put up a data center in the service territory of Cobb EMC doesn’t really make sense. That’s a good problem for them to have.
TIM JARRELL: Exactly.
Project SolarBee
WENDY GROUNDS: Let’s talk a little bit about Project SolarBee. How do you measure the success for these sort of projects? What are your metrics and your performance indicators for solar?
TIM JARRELL: Yeah, so some of the key metrics are system uptime, the cost savings that the projects bring. There has to be some economic value to our members for that. The carbon reduction, it is a sustainability project, so there are some carbon reduction goals that it helps us achieve. Operational flexibility, how quickly can we ramp up and ramp down the resources.
And then the educational value. We have had a lot of folks come out and visit from schools to senior citizens facilities to others, and just talk about it, and they’ve all seemed to really enjoy it. So, it’s not just about performance, it’s about the impact on the community and the impact on our members.
Sharing Lessons Learned
BILL YATES: What about other utilities or other EMCs? Are they – I imagine they’re coming and taking a look, too, and saying, you know, “Okay, we’re thinking about similar projects, microgrids.” Either customers, clients are coming to them and saying, you know, okay, “We want a microgrid for our production facility or manufacturing,” or they’re thinking about it for their own campus or to supplement what they have. Have you had a lot of those inquiries, and how does that go?
I mean, you know, again, my experience was working for a private company where we wouldn’t want to show our cards, so to speak, you know. We wouldn’t want to open up the books and talk about the pros and cons of a project. But it’s a little bit different for an EMC. So how do you guys deal with that?
TIM JARRELL: That’s right. We have talked on many panels about the project, and we’re open to talk about it with anyone. And we’ve talked to many other EMCs, we even taught some IOUs, lessons learned, you know, the benefits of the project. But have the end goal in mind. Know what purpose you’re doing the project for. What are you trying to solve, whether it’s a demand response or some other purpose of the project.
But we started small, and then we learned from that, and now we’re going larger. And I think that’s a good phased-in approach because we learned a lot through the process. And focus on interoperability, that’s pretty important.
Safety again is number one. Make sure you engage the right cross-functional teams in the project. And the communication, like I said, is very important because you’ve got many people that are involved in the project. Be ready to adapt. Make sure the project aligns with your goals, your missions, and the economics make sense. That’s kind of the key things to think through, you know, before starting the project. But I feel like our approach where we started small, learned from it, and now we’re better prepared to do something on a larger scale.
The Good and The Bad
BILL YATES: That’s good. You know, Tim, I hadn’t thought about it until we’re sitting here, but practically having that project or those projects on campus, that had to be good and bad for you. Mostly good, I would think, because it’s convenient. You know, it’s like, okay, I can walk out of my office and go meet with a vendor, meet with a contractor right here. I don’t have to drive across town or whatever.
The bad side is it’s so visible; right? You got everybody who could kind of put their nose in it and come knock on your door in the office. But how did it balance out for you? Was it helpful to have this be like the first, like you said, a first smaller project leading to larger ones? Was it better off having it pretty close by to your office?
TIM JARRELL: It was. It was nice having it on campus because we could. We’d go down there and talk about it anytime. We could meet folks down there. If there was an issue, it’s easier to troubleshoot. And so, we liked starting on our campus as the first project for Microgrid.
BILL YATES: Yeah, putting eyes on something and being able to look at it together is huge. So yeah, I can see that.
TIM JARRELL: And there was a lot of learning, like I said, a lot of cross-functional learning across the campus, not just my group, but other departments, as well. And it was very convenient that we’re all right there.
Leadership and Innovative Projects
WENDY GROUNDS: A lot of these projects have been really innovative and something new. So how has this affected your leadership style, leading some of these projects that are handling risk and driving innovation?
TIM JARRELL: I tell you; it just gives me great warmth and comfort every time we complete a project, and so many people were involved, and it worked. Yeah, and how many people it took coordinating and how well they coordinated and communicated. And that was just a great success story, not just for me and my team, but all the people that were involved.
So, it makes you feel like you did something right when everything works at the end of a project; right? It also keeps reinforcing how important collaboration is, risk management, because you, you know, we’re very good about identifying risk, putting those on a risk matrix. What is our mitigation strategies? For those, I think it’s extremely important to do that. And then continuous learning.
Now, I’ve been in the energy business 30 years. I still learn every day, and I think that’s important. I like learning and will continue to learn new things. It makes us more agile, focus on empowering teams and, you know, I just love what I do, love the folks I work with.
WENDY GROUNDS: How long have you been with Cobb EMC?
TIM JARRELL: Oh, I have been there with Cobb for 26 years. Six of those I was a consultant working for a company called Energy Consulting Group, and then I become an employee in 2006 for Cobb EMC.
Find Out More
WENDY GROUNDS: If our listeners want to find out more about Cobb EMC or if they want to get in touch with you, where should they go?
TIM JARRELL: So, they can certainly get our website. We have a sustainability section. Our website talks about solar. It talks about battery storage. It talks about now 2030 sustainability goals. They can reach out to me coming through the main Cobb EMC line. They can connect or shoot me an email. My email is tim.jarrell@cobbemc.com. Can reach out to me anytime, and we’re happy to talk to folks about our innovation and strategies.
BILL YATES: That’s awesome. We’ll have to put a link to your famous video, too. The video is like a five-minute video. It shows, it’ll visualize, you know, help people visualize a lot of this.
TIM JARRELL: We did that during COVID, as well. The back end of COVID.
BILL YATES: Well, this has been so fun, to be able to talk through these projects with you. Being able to, again, see the battery barn, see the gas generator, see all the solar flowers and the solar panels that are on the campus, and then step back and see how it’s all integrated. And what a strong thumbprint of innovation you guys have on the company and really on the industry through what you’ve done. So, well done. And thanks for taking the time to show us around and then come in here and talk with us about it.
TIM JARRELL: It’s been my pleasure. Always happy to. You know, I’m thankful that we’ve got a CEO, a board that supports innovation and sustainability and looking to the future. And we’ll hang tight, see what’s next.
Closing
WENDY GROUNDS: That’s it for us on Manage This. Thank you for joining us today. You can visit us at Velociteach.com, where you can also subscribe to this podcast and see a complete transcript of the show. You’ve also earned your free PDUs by listening to this podcast. To claim them, go to Velociteach.com. Choose Manage This Podcast from the top of the page. Click the button that says Claim PDUs and click through the steps.
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