Podcasts about alectra

If you're not in Copenhagen for fashion week, here's your (virtual) ticket :)Last week, we talked to Ane from Alpha about studying fashion in the Nordics and how to make it as an artistic designer.Over the next three episodes, we've got interviews with some of the most exciting names to watch from the region.First up is Alectra Rothschild, whose show for her Masculina label was one of the most anticipated, thanks to last season's electric on-schedule debut.Vogue noted it was "probably history-making' - because Alectra was the first openly trans woman to show at Copenhagen, and because of the her iconic community casting. Listen out in this chat for the part about what a positive force that representation has been - she gets so many messages from fans around the world saying they feel seen. And want to place orders.Another big theme in this interview is sustainable business models, and what works when you're a small designer. How do you scale? Do you want to? Do you even try? Maybe you plan to go and work for an established house instead? Or, is there a way to stay independent, cater to your community and keep things bespoke?For Alectra (who trained as a tailor, worked at Mugler and did her MA at Central St Martins in London), it's about seeing herself as a "designer, but also maker, artist and costume designer" and focusing - for now at least - on commissioned pieces.Ask her to sum up her clothes and she says, “flamboyant, high femme, and quite shameless”. She's done with being put in a box and categorised - we contain multitudes. Above all she wants to enjoy herself. She makes clothes for night life. Her runways are a party, calling to mind the 1980s when the most exciting fashion scene was DIY, driven by club culture and community. Good times ahead.Can you help us spread the word ?Wardrobe Crisis is an independent production. We don't believe in barriers to entry and are determined to keep this content free.If you value it, please help by sharing your favourite Episodes, and rating / reviewing us in Apple orSpotify. Thank you!Find Clare on Instagram @mrspress Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Host Pauly Shore gets back to his MTV roots, when he sits down to talk with popular bands, influencers and comedians new and old, about a variety of topics, in a funny and always unpredictable talk show at Jam in the Van! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Your earbuds will go the distance when Music Phe-nom Alectra Music, model, musician, artist and rapper AND her manager, Waka Flocka Flame's Mother and artist manager extraordinaire, rapper Gucci Mane's former manager and the CEO of So Icey/Mizay Entertainment, Debra Antney flow into the HLS STUDIO with Big Lucks, ‘Ol Blue Eyes, and Chumahan to talk about the rising star Alectra's training regimen, backstory and future, hear what it takes to become a real music mogul from a tried and tested real insider, hear where exercise, breathwork and singing intersect, listen to the principles of focus and dedication, also DEBRA shares her food guilty pleasure, BONUS: THE SECRETS TO SUCCESS IN MUSIC ARE IN THIS EPISODE #alectra #fyp #hiphop #artist #woman@biglucks17 @chumahan_ @alectramusic @huddlesappco @wakaflockaflame @guccimane @brickbronson https://www.youtube.com/c/ALECTRAMUSIC/featuredwww.hardluckshow.comwww.hardluckshow.com/mercadoEmail to: hluckshow@gmail.comHLS: Audiobook ART OF WAR hls.gumroad.com/l/mbhxsSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-hard-luck-show/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Jade Alectra is a yoga teacher who helps people awaken what's been sleeping by embarking on a journey of self-acceptance, love, and growth. She currently teaches classes in Southern California and leads workshops and retreats around the world. Jade found that yoga helped her heal from past hurt, trauma, and heartbreak, and she decided to become a yoga teacher to help guide people home to themselves. Rather than telling people to “leave things behind,” her emotion-based teaching style encourages people to work through it on the mat. The entirety of Jade's story, along with the experiences of two others, was told via the A Little Bit Culty podcast. You can listen to the two-part conversation here: https://www.alittlebitculty.com/season-3/blog-post-title-one-kldc6-en2f4-3cbje-bc9ak-ebcw6-e8fyn Follow her on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/jadealectra Do yoga with her here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1RgnowaaNA Join her seven days to soul challenge: https://www.7days2soul.com _______________________________________ The views and opinions expressed on this podcast do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the podcast. Any content provided by our guests is of their opinion, voluntarily shared, and is not intended to malign any religion, group, club, organization, business, individual, anyone, or anything. _______________________________________ Follow me on Instagram @LongDistanceLoveBombs: https://www.instagram.com/longdistancelovebombs Looking for a heartfelt gift? Visit my print shop here: https://www.longdistancelovebombs.com/theshop Sign up for my weekly newsletter! Click here: https://longdistancelovebombs.mykajabi.com/email. It's easy and takes five seconds. Check out a list of my favorite books here: https://www.amazon.com/shop/longdistancelovebombs --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/longdistancelovebombs/message

We're picking up where we left off a couple of weeks ago with our countdown to Giving Tuesday, and we're going to talk to a community group that's focused on a very specific aspect of environmental protection. Guelph has its share of so-called "tree huggers", but there's only one group that's trying to make this a better place for pollinating insects. When talking about pollinators, most people think of bees, but some species of beetles, flies, moths and butterflies are also pollinating insects. We need pollen for things to grow, and we need insects to help move the pollen, so you can imagine why it was a pretty big deal when scientists started noticing that there weren't as many pollinating insects as there used to be. In terms of committing to local action, that's when Pollination Guelph was born. Pollination Guelph is an incorporated non-profit that's dedicated to promoting awareness and understanding about pollinators. Their success is kind of easy to see as they've helped establish pollinator gardens at Hospice Wellington, Alectra's Guelph office, and, most notably, the large pollinator garden in Eastview Park. It's an impressive feat for an all volunteer group co-ordinating their efforts, but like everyone else, COVID-19 has had an impact on their activities and fundraising. This week, we're joined by Clare Irwin, the Co-Chair of the Pollination Guelph Board of Directors. Irwin takes us through the science of pollination, and how it relates to bigger environmental issues like the fight against climate change. She will also talk about how to create a more general insect-friendly environment, and why not all plants are pollinators and not all gardens are welcoming to pollinators. And finally, she will answer the question about what gardening  groups do in the winter months. So let's talk about helping the pollen flow on this week's Guelph Politicast! If you're looking for an opportunity to help out with Pollination Guelph, or if you're looking for resources and advice about planting pollinator gardens, and you can find all that at their website. You can also follow Pollination Guelph on social media on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, and Spotify. Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

New considerations for innovating how electricity is generated, distributed, and stored are being made every day. This includes the development and implementation of distributed energy resources - a promising solution for increasing the integration of clean energy. How will distributed energy resources help us reach our climate change targets, and what changes will be needed in order for the grid to support them? Vice President of the Alectra Green Energy & Technology Centre, Neetika Sathe, is here with us today to give us the scoop. Related Content & Links:  Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neetika-sathe-08ab644/ --- Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:51 Hey, everyone, welcome back. This is the ThinkEnergy podcast and today we'll explore and unpack distributed energy. I'm Dan Seguin.   Rebecca Schwartz  01:00 And I'm Rebecca Schwartz. You know, Dan, I've been thinking a lot about climate change.   Dan Seguin  01:04 Oh, boy, here comes another millennial rant.   Rebecca Schwartz  01:07 No, no, no, don't worry, I'm actually feeling grateful. Because when it comes to innovating, how we live and operate in order to stop and reverse climate change. Of course, Canada's goal is pretty ambitious and admirable. Canada's plans to be a netzero nation by 2050. I think it's pretty cool.   Dan Seguin  01:23 Absolutely very cool. And the City of Ottawa has also announced plans to be a zero emission city by 2050.   Rebecca Schwartz  01:31 To be honest, it feels like that's a lifetime away, since it's quite literally as many years away as I've been alive. But it's incredible news and evidence that our governments are committed to a decarbonized future.   Dan Seguin  01:42 and utilities! They're also gearing up at the front lines to align with these goals, especially in the electricity sector. New considerations for innovating how electricity is generated, distributed, and store are being made every day. This includes the development and implementation of distributed energy resources, a promising solution for increasing the integration of clean energy. Unlike the typical electricity journey, where it's supplied to customers from a centralized source, distributed energy resources are a means for customers to store their own generated electricity, which they can then choose to redirect the access back into the grid. Because this concept is quite different from how the grid was originally designed, a great deal of innovation and testing is required to ensure its continued reliability and safety.   Rebecca Schwartz  02:42 The people behind the Alectra green energy and technology center strongly believe in building a clean energy future and embracing new technologies. Now putting this belief into action, they have been leading the way for the development of emerging clean and customer friendly energy solutions, like distributed energy resources across their 1800 square kilometer service territory that serves approximately 1 million homes and businesses within 17 communities like Mississauga, St. Catharines and Hamilton.   Dan Seguin  03:11 So, Rebecca, here's today's big question: How will distributed energy resources help us reach our climate change targets, and what changes will be needed in order for the grid to support them? Vice President of Alectra green energy and technology center, the Neetika Sathe is here with us today to give us the scoop. Hey Neetika, welcome to the think energy podcast. Perhaps you can start us off by telling us a bit more about your role with electric Green Energy Technology Center.   Neetika Sathe  03:50 Hey, first of all, thank you so much for inviting me I can't tell you how excited I am to be here and for the opportunity to share my perspective and and the journey within the GRE&T Center. So for those of you who don't know, electric is the second largest municipally owned utility in all of North America, we serve over a million customers in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. within Alectra we launched the green energy and technology center in 2019 with a mandate to identify, evaluate and develop and accelerate emerging clean and customer friendly energy solutions. So think of us as the ground floor for innovation within Alectra, where clean energy ideas come to life.   Rebecca Schwartz  04:39 Thanks, Neetika. Now can you tell our listeners a bit about distributed energy resources, such as how they work and also provide a couple examples?   Neetika Sathe  04:48 Sure. So distributed energy resources, which we fondly call DERs are usually referred to smaller, clean generation units that are usually located within the customer's premises, the customer could be residential, or commercial or institutional. But typically those distributed energy resources are on the customer side on the other side of the meter, and interconnected with the grid. So to give you some examples, could be rooftop solar panels, wind generating units, wind turbines, battery storage, could be your lithium ion battery storage, smart heat pumps and even electric vehicles, basically, essentially any device that can be integrated and connected to the local distribution, system or grid that is within the proximity of the customer, and possibly owned, possibly operated by the customer.   Dan Seguin  05:58 Could you tell our listeners what makes distributed energy resources an attractive option? As we strive towards our net zero goals? Are they enough to help us get there.   Neetika Sathe  06:10 So netzero goals are rather lofty and extremely aspirational. So now the whole world is looking around trying to find those low hanging fruits that can get us to our netzero goals. The beauty of DERs is that they are largely clean, dispatchable, scalable, easy to integrate into the grid provided, we work on it upfront, if we catch the DERs. As an aftereffect, it's going to cause a lot of issues for the grid. So we have a generational opportunity to ensure that the ER is integrated properly into the grid. Because these are clean and sustainable, they hold a great promise in helping us reduce GHG emissions. And that would contribute towards net zero goals. So rather than talk at high level, let's take an example, solar panels on the roof to help meet the needs of a home, the same home could have a battery storage unit and electric vehicles. And going further, when when both is distributed energy resources are used to feed the local grid. So when there is a time of high GHG Emission emissions from the grid, we could switch over to these local DERs, we could ask the customers for their support to switch over to these clean local DERs and not need to switch on or power on the natural gas or any other fossil fuel large generation. And as a result, by the use of these DERs, we could eliminate GHG emissions from the energy systems.   Rebecca Schwartz  07:57 So what does having distributed energy resources look like from the customer's perspective? Do they necessitate any lifestyle changes? And what are some of the benefits.   Neetika Sathe  08:08 So traditionally, our customers have had a passive engagement. Typically, as customers, even when we go home, we flip the switch and we don't think about it what all is happening in the background to get those electrons into our home, to give us light or to power the TV or any other appliances. But as we are moving more towards a decentralized grid, as the technology options are coming up, as energy solutions are coming up with the DERs, the customer expectations are also changing. So they're literally being able to put the customer in the driver's seat, no pun intended as they drive electric. So they can now make the choice of when they want to use their own distributed energy resources. And when they want to purchase from the grid. So think of it as the customer becoming from a passive customer to a prosumer. Whereby they can be a producer of energy or a consumer of energy. And the choice is theirs. They make the call. So it's and the DERs of the customers could have they could have smart appliances, electric vehicle storage, solar roof or ground roof solar and and really being able to integrate all of this now does it mean any lifestyle change for the customer? I guess the trick is that all of this needs to be technology enabled. So think of it as a very high tech, yet high touch. In other words, the technology needs to do what the customers want. So the customer needs to continue having the lifestyle that they choose their choice. But the difference now is there is technology set in forget technology that enables them to have more choice than just the traditional electricity grid. So this is in stark contrast of the past, our electricity generation over centuries has been better customer has strictly been a passive receiver of energy,   Dan Seguin  10:25 Alectra's green energy and technology center has a number of pilot projects, such as this is a mouthful, folks, the York Region Non-wires, alternative demonstration project, and the powerhouse hybrid project. Can you tell us about the main intent behind these projects, and what your findings have been so far?   Neetika Sathe  10:49 So at the GRE&T Center, we always want to innovate with intention. And the intention behind the pilots is always look for Win Win Win solution, we're never satisfied with one win, it needs to be the first win has got to be for the customer. It's got to work for the customer, customer friendly, meaningful, purposeful, relevant, otherwise, it's not going to stick it'll just be a science experiment. The second win has to be for the grid, especially when you're talking with respect to DERs, the proliferation of the DERs, there needs to be a thoughtful and planned integration into the grid. And only then can you get a huge benefit out of the DERs for the customer and the grid. The third win is for all of society, and we're at times where climate change is no longer an 'if', and we're all looking for solutions that that we can that can make a difference within our generation, otherwise, the future generations won't have a planet to depend on. So our intention with all of the GRE&T center pilots, whether it's the IESO non buyers, alternative pilot, or the powerhouse of powerhouse hybrid grid exchange be working on multiple platforms and and solutions. It's got to be it's got to be a win across board.   Rebecca Schwartz  12:31 Okay. Now, can you tell us how projects like these are influencing and innovating the grid?   Neetika Sathe  12:37 The conversation is focused on the need for reform, transformation and regulatory change. But until you don't roll up your sleeves and actually work on it, you got to be able to get into the trenches. It's really difficult to forecast what all roadblocks and hot points you're going to gather along the way. So the whole idea is that when we're talking about the need for policy change, the need for regulatory change that we bring real time experience from our pilots into our discussion so that those discussions can be grounded in reality, otherwise, there is a lot of vaporware in the industry right now.   Dan Seguin  13:21 What are some of the biggest modernizations you foresee being made to the grid by 2050? How is digitisation influencing these processes?   Neetika Sathe  13:33 So the grid is going to get much smarter, wiser, more intelligent, and more connected. If anything, or industry is a little bit late to the party, and we've and we have the good fortune, or the luxury of learning from other industries where this disruption has already happened. Be in the taxi industry, the banking industry, retail industry, hotel industry, they're all being transformed by digitalization. And they're all banking on one basic fundamental shift in demographics - the openness for sharing economy. So whether it's an Airbnb or you look at Uber, you have democratization of their solutions, whereby a common citizen is willing to share their assets, or their comfort or their lifestyle, as long as they're getting rewarded and incentivized in a way that works for them. So in other words, you've got a car that's sitting around, you're only driving around 4% utilization of that asset, but then you've got a little extra time. You don't mind becoming an Uber driver. And you're you're gregarious, you like hanging around people. So it works for you and you make some money. Think of those kinds of concepts now coming into our energy world, whereby that's where, that's how the birth of the concept of transactive energy takes place, whereby I talked earlier about the customer becoming a prosumer. But now those prosumers with their own distributed energy resources, should be able to play in an energy market and give some and get some. So you may be able to give some of your comfort or your or your battery storage, because the grid needs it, but then the LDC may reward you back with some dollars or some loyalty points. In fact, we are teasing this very concept out with our grid exchange transactive energy platform,   Rebecca Schwartz  15:53 Supposing everyone suddenly started putting their hands up to have distributed energy resources, would it even be possible? What are the challenges that we'll need to overcome to start seeing their mainstream adoption all across Canada?   Neetika Sathe  16:07 So the answer to this question is very similar to a Facebook status update, it's complicated. The devil truly is in the details at the distribution feeder, or transformer level, or even at a green transformer at a street level, it is impossible to generalize across Ontario or across Canada. So it really depends on the state of the grid infrastructure. If the grid infrastructure has room, it's easy to add the DERs. But if the infrastructure is already at its limit, be a thermal limit, voltage, capacity, then you're going to run out of you're going to need to think out of the box solution. So I'll give you an example. On your street, if you've got, let's say 12 homes, if one of those neighbors buys electric and starts driving electric starts charging the car, when they come home at five o'clock, no big deal, your green transformer on your street will be able to take that additional 10-12 Whatever that kilo kilowatt load turns out to be. Now, but out of 12 of those homes, let's say five electric vehicles come along. Now that green transformer at five o'clock is going to go toast, it will burn down because we would have taken it beyond its capacity limits. So how do you ensure that you can add these DERs on the existing grid keep in mind the existing grid was never designed for this kind of additional load, right. But there is a need whether it is because of democratization or decentralization, people want those energy choices, then as the utilities, it's our job to ensure that we are able to onboard these distributed energy resources. And the way to do it is start thinking outside the box. For example, perhaps we stagger, we work closely with the customer, we engage the customer, we take their permission, so the customer needs to remain in the driver's seat, we take their permission, maybe some customers say I really don't care if I start charging at five o'clock, or you want to start charging me at nine o'clock, as long as my car is fully charged for my trip tomorrow morning to work. Yet some other customer may say my wife's expecting and I may need to rush to the hospital, so I want to override and I want my car charged right now no matter what the consequences are. So the beauty with DERs is the fragmented. Think of them, like these hundreds of 1000s of minions out there that you could literally you could you know, like you could run a virtual power plant, if you were only able to talk to all of them, If only you were able to monitor control and engage with the customer one on one with these. And that's where the power comes from. It's really the power of shared economy and put intelligence on top of it to be able to really engage on a two way conversation with the customer and harness the value from these DERs. So hence the need from a smart grid so that these DERs don't exert demand all at the same time. So you can stagger them, you can queue them up, you can toggle them, you can throttle them. There are so many different options. intelligent ways to work around the problem rather than just go to the basic let's just upgrade all the infrastructure which will be tremendously expensive.   Rebecca Schwartz  20:10 Do you perceive maintenance becoming an issue as the system becomes more decentralized?   Neetika Sathe  20:16 So there are there are pros and cons to decentralization. Definitely grid modernization will require some infrastructure cost and some maintenance cost - it's going to be a new regime, different from your traditional way of running the grid. And keep in mind right now our systems rest at night. And the peak usually happens within Ontario. It happens during summer, during sunny days, because our peak is mainly coming from air conditioning loads. However, if we go into deep decarbonisation, and we want to run in heating on electricity, we are quickly going to turn from a summer day peaking province to a winter night peaking province. So that's going to look very different. And I don't have the answer, what the repercussion will be on on the system maintenance, but it is going to be a very different kind of a grid to operate.   Dan Seguin  21:22 I'm wondering if you could expand on some of the features that make the home or business a better candidate for distributed energy resources? What are some of the determining factors.   Neetika Sathe  21:34 So it all depends on the needs of the individual home or business. So in some cases, it's very simple. If you want to put solar panels on your roof, you probably if you have a 15 year old roof, or 20 year old roof, you probably want to change your roof before you put the panels up. And if you've got a large tree that is shading your roof and you don't want to cut that trim that tree down your roof is probably not the optimum optimal place to put that solar. So it's some of it is very intuitive. When it comes to electric vehicles, for example, it really depends on how you what your driving patterns are. 60% of Canadian drivers are driving less than 60 kilometers a day. But law of averages does not work when you're looking at a specific person's needs. So if you are traveling across cities every day, you've got you're putting a lot of clicks on your car, and you only have one car within the family. Probably the current EVs are not a good fit for you. But having said that, models are coming up where the batteries battery sizes are increasing. And the infrastructure for charging on the road on route is also increasing. But if you are a household of two cars, and you you're you drive 50-60 to 100-150 kilometers a day, you actually are a fantastic candidate to drive electric and enjoy the benefits of a cleaner drive and a much more fun to drive experience. So it really depends on the specific DER and how it matches up with your lifestyle.   Rebecca Schwartz  23:22 Alright, so how might someone who was interested in adopting distributed energy resources for their homes or business get the ball rolling?   Neetika Sathe  23:30 Do your research. Learn whichever best way you learn for me I love hanging around people I learned best by talking to people. If you if you're looking for EVs talk to someone who's driving an EV if you learn better by you know going for test drives and going for demonstrations like go to, for example plug and drive has an experiential center in Toronto or go to any of the dealers and ask for a test drive. There are so many websites including Aletra we have a website where we put a ton of resources on EVs. Alectra.com/e-mobility, so there's a lot of information out there. You do you Whatever floats your boat, but do your research and start whetting your appetite to figure out how what kind of DERS will fit your lifestyle.   Dan Seguin  24:25 Hey Nitika we're just about done. How about we close off with some rapid fire questions? What is your favorite word?   Neetika Sathe  24:35 It's got to be collaborate.   Dan Seguin  24:38 What is the one thing you can't live without   Neetika Sathe  24:42 Probably oxygen.   Dan Seguin  24:43 What is something that challenges you?   Neetika Sathe  24:47 purposeful innovation - how to innovate with intention   Dan Seguin  24:51 If you could have one superpower, what would it be?   Neetika Sathe  24:54 The ability to travel across time.   Dan Seguin  24:57 If you could turn back time and talk to your 18 year old What would you tell her?   Neetika Sathe  25:01 I would say don't over analyze. It's, it's not the destination that's important. The journey is important, not the destination. And the most important thing is the people that you meet and go along at on the journey.   Dan Seguin  25:19 And lastly, what do you currently find most interesting in your sector,   Neetika Sathe  25:24 I came into the utility sector because I sniffed a generational opportunity. I was, I was at Nissan, launching the Nissan LEAF, the first all electric 100% electric car from Nissan. And that's when my eyes opened up to this huge possibility of, of the automotive sector making a difference actual make actually making a difference in, in our sustainability. And really, it's the it's the power of discovering the possibilities. I know it's, it's a cliched line, this is Alectra's slugline, but I so totally believe in it, collaborating and discovering the possibilities, we actually have a generational opportunity to make a difference. And for once our electricity sector, for the most part in Canada, at least definitely in Ontario. And as you mentioned in Quebec, we are the part of the solution. We are not the problem, we bring the solution. So that's what really really excites me about our sector.   Rebecca Schwartz  26:33 Well latika, we've reached the end of another episode of The think energy podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today. We hope you had fun. I sure hope you enjoyed this episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. If so please head over to our iTunes SUBSCRIBE And leave us a review.   Dan Seguin  26:51 Now For show notes and bonus content visit ThinkEnergy.com. Also, be sure to tell your friends and colleagues about us.   Rebecca Schwartz  26:59 Thank you for listening

The Bill Kelly Show Podcast: Premier Doug Ford's government will announce its new plan for lifting more of Ontario's COVID-19 public health restrictions next week. The easing of pandemic measures could include ending capacity limits in all locations where proof-of-vaccination requirements are in place, such as restaurants, bars and gyms, a senior official in Ford's government said Wednesday. GUEST: Sabrina Nanji, Founder of the Queen's Park Observer -  The Ontario government's plan to invest $260 million and hire 4,000 staff within a year in the long-term care sector is, simply put, misguided. The reason given for this financial injection is to meet the goal of providing long-term care residents with an average of four hours direct care per day.  Long-Term Care Minister Rod Phillips, in his Oct. 6 announcement, also stated, “This investment will allow all homes to hire and retain the staff they need.” This is simply not true. What this announcement and funding scheme reflect is yet another ineffective attempt to solve the crisis of the worker shortage without addressing the bigger issue – retaining the folks in these positions. You can read to full Op-ed article HERE. GUEST: Laura Bulmer, Chair of the Canadian Association of Continuing Care Providers - A Hamilton city councillor is pushing back against a new poll that claims the “silent majority” of Hamiltonians want to expand the urban boundary. In a tweet, Ward 8's John-Paul Danko referred to a new Nanos Research poll — funded by the Realtors' Associatpusion of Hamilton-Burlington (RAHB), the Ontario Real Estate Association (OREA), and the West End Home Builders' Association (WEHBA) — as “a clear example of how the development industry is able to buy public policy.” The Nanos poll of 700 randomly selected residents, surveyed by phone between Aug. 24 and Sept. 18, found that 38 per cent of respondents want the city of Hamilton to expand the urban boundary into farmland. GUEST: Michael Collins-Williams, Chief Executive Officer of the West End Home Builders' Association - Hamilton councillors have strong words for Alectra Utilities, after learning that it will stop providing water billing services to the city when its contract expires in 2024. “I'm very disappointed, and I feel blindsided by Alectra,” says Ward 6 Coun. Tom Jackson. “I thought we had a darn good working relationship.” Jackson fears the utility's decision will contribute to higher costs for the city and future tax increases. GUEST: Lloyd Ferguson, Councillor for Ward 12 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Recorded on Zoom in late June 2021, episode 37 is the fourth in a series of podcasts seeking to unpack Canada's Net Zero 2050 greenhouse gas target. For this episode, Brian Bentz, President and CEO of Alectra Inc., the largest municipally-owned utility in Canada, discusses Net Zero by 2050 from an electricity distribution company's perspective. In my conversation with Brian, we discuss the evolution of Alectra, their 2025 GHG reduction targets, their 2050 aspirations, and what the distribution company of tomorrow may look like. We also talk about the urgent need to redefine the regulatory compact to enable future innovation. And, as with previous discussions, the conversation wraps with a book recommendation from Brian.

We've heard a lot about the City of Guelph's intention to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. That is the corporate goal of the City of Guelph, and while it's a laudible, City Hall doesn't generate power. So isn't there a key partner they need to bring on board to reach net zero by 2050? Like the company that provides all our electricity? Well, there was recently some good news on that account. Last month, the largest municipally-owned energy company in Canada, who just so happens to be co-owned by the City of Guelph, announced their intention to cut their own emissions to net zero by 2050. Alectra joins countries like South Korea, Japan and Canada, and companies like BP, Ford, American Airlines, and Facebook in drawing that red line to go net zero by 2050. Of course, setting lofty goals is easy, actually achieving them is the hard part. Not only is Alectra working to get to net zero by 2050, and they're aiming to reduce corporate emissions by 38 per cent of their 2016 baseline by 2025. That translates to an annual reduction of greenhouse gases by just 4.2 per cent every year, which sounds easy, but most of that is Alectra's vehicle use. If you want to replace your family vehicle with an electric car, it's no big deal, but can you buy an electric version of one of those big work trucks with the cherry picker? That's one of the challenges we explore on this week's podcast with Caroline Karvonen, the Manager of Sustainability at Alectra Utilities. She will talk about how Alectra's efforts intersect with Guelph's, and how they're also co-ordinating with other electricity-providers in Ontario. She will also take us through the process to reach net zero, how Alectra came up with their targets, and what they have to do in order to reach them. And finally, she will discuss how all these changes might affect your energy bill. Let's talk about the work to go greener on this week's edition of the Guelph Politicast! To learn more about Alectra Utilities and their sustainability efforts, you can visit their website. You can also stay on top of the City of Guelph's own efforts to get to 100 per cent renewable and net zero emissions by 2050 at the City's website. The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, and Spotify. Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

According to a recent survey by chartered professional accountants Canada 34% of Canadians have fallen victim to scams and frauds. Sadly, the energy industry is no stranger to the world of scam artists looking to make quick money from unsuspecting energy consumers. Here with us to discuss the criminal minds behind utility scams is Jared Lawrence, Vice President of Revenue Services and Metering at Duke Energy. He is also the founder and executive committee chair of an organization known as Utilities United Against Scams - a sort of Justice League for the energy industry. Tune in to learn how to protect yourself and your loved ones. Related Content & Links:  Jared Lawrence - Vice President of Revenue Services and Metering at Duke Energy LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaredalawrence/  Duke Energy - https://www.duke-energy.com/  Utilities United Against Scams - https://www.utilitiesunited.org --- Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:02 Hey, everyone, welcome back to another episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. Catch me if you can. Fyre festival, the greatest party that never happened. The Wolf of Wall Street and catfish. We love to watch movies about scammers, grifters and con artists, but we never want to be on the receiving end of their schemes. Yet, according to a recent survey by chartered professional accountants Canada 34% of Canadians have fallen victim to scams and frauds. And the Canadian anti fraud centre reports that in 2019, nearly 45,000 Canadians lost $96 million to scammers. It may or may not be surprising. But the energy industry is no stranger to the world of scam artists looking to make quick money from unsuspecting energy consumers like you and me. A scam is reported to the Better Business Bureau every 15 minutes. of the 30 different types of scams tracked and reported, the average financial loss to a utility customer is a whopping $500. And as we've seen firsthand in the energy industry, fraudsters are becoming more and more sophisticated. evolving with time. Scammers like to take advantage of opportunities throughout the covid 19 pandemic. We've seen an increase in their efforts through a call, text, email, and even show up in person at a customer's home and place of business to intimidate and threaten. A popular tactic includes posing as a representative of a local utility like Hydro Ottawa and demanding immediate payment for a supposedly overdue account. To add stress and pressure, they threatened to disconnect power within the hour if they do not get payment. Frantic customers already reeling from the pandemic and possibly economic hardships fall victim to these convincing criminals and their pressure tactics by purchasing prepaid debit cards, gift cards, any form of cryptocurrency, or third party digital payments mobile applications, utility companies have ramped up efforts to educate customers so they can be aware of the dangers of utility scams and avoid them. Hydro Ottawa for instance, has partnered with other large distributors in the province like Hydro One, Toronto hydro, and Alectra utilities over the last couple of years to help spread the word far and wide when a scam happens. So that as many regions as possible are notified. So here is today's big question: How can utility companies protect their customers from increasingly sophisticated schemes and fraud? Is the answer a united front? And on a personal note? Is this my first true crime podcast? We shall see. Joining me on today's show is Jared Lawrence, Vice President of revenue services and metering at Duke Energy, one of the largest electric power holding companies in the US. Duke Energy provides electricity to 7.7 million customers in Florida, the Carolinas and parts of the Midwest. Jared is also the founder and executive committee chair of an organization known as utilities united against scams - a sort of Justice League for the energy industry if you will. Batman. I mean Jared, welcome to the show. Now Jared, scams are such a big problem in our industry that there's a utility Scam Awareness Day. And National Scam Awareness Week. That's how big the problems gotten. What can you tell us about utilities united against scams and your vision when you started it?   Jared Lawrence  05:25 Well, that's an excellent question. And there's actually a Hydro Ottawa connection that I will, I'll get to in a second, Dan. Really, utilities unite against scams started as a result of an internal investigation at my company, we were hosting our CEO, actually, in our call center where both our customer care agents as well as the back office employees report to me, we're having a q&a session with our CEO. And one of the customer care specialists raised her hand and said, Ms. Good, I'm, I'm really concerned, we have a lot of customers calling up about scammers. And they're convinced that these scammers actually have their information. What are we doing about this? and this was back in 2015. So this was on this was in the context of a number of high profile breaches with major retailers that were in the media. And so this was something we were definitely heightened, had a heightened sensitivity to. And she actually looked at me as as one of the two leaders in the room and said, "Yes, Jared, what are we doing about that?" I said, "Well, we're not doing anything, right now. But we're going to start tomorrow." And so we had actually, we commissioned a SWAT team internally to make sure that there were no data breaches, no breaches with our vendors, no, inside bad actors who were sharing information with scammers. And it became apparent very quickly, that these scammers did not actually have customer information. They were just brilliant social engineers, and all of our information networks were completely secure. So we got to the end of that effort, it took about, you know, three weeks to do that intensive investigation. And then I said to the team "Well now what?" we're not going to leave these folks, you know, our customers out there to fend for themselves against these criminals. What do we learn from this? And what can we do about it. And it became apparent to me pretty quickly that, that this is a problem of international scale, but each utility was attacking it as an individual entity. And we would have so much more presence, so much more of a voice in the public policy space, if we joined together as the as the influential industry that serves the public, and use our clout to basically push for change and better protect our customers. So that's not the concept of utilities in order to get scams was born. I made the pitch to a number of attendees at CS week. And so for many folks in the utility industry are aware that this week is the the customer service focus conference for utility professionals. This was back in in the spring of 2016, then, and immediately the cause essentially sold itself there were 25 utility organizations represented in the room and every single one of them came up to me afterwards, and expressed interest in becoming part of this vision of this industry effort. But it was actually in a breakfast conversation, later on during the conference with Dave McKendry, who's retired from Hydro Ottawa, who's become a friend of mine through our board work on CS week. And he pulled me aside he said, Jared, I've been thinking a lot about your utilities united against scams effort. And I suggest maybe you consider a national campaign. And, and the fact that utilities across North America are coming together, to work together for this specific event, this specific campaign that's newsworthy in and of itself. And I think, Jared that if you if you take that approach, you you will be able to attract so much more interest in this cause, and, frankly, so much more membership, and he was spot on. I thought it was a fantastic suggestion. We made that kind of the centerpiece of our first few months of existence back in 2016, culminating with our national utility Scam Awareness Day and actually utility Scam Awareness Week in November of 2016. The US House of Representatives of course, recognized us with the declaration of national utility Scam Awareness Day. And we went from 25 utility organizations that expressed interest at that first conference to 89 members by the time we get to that campaign in November, and since then, we've grown to where we are today at exactly 150 across the US and Canada. So it's grown beyond what I honestly could have expected or hoped for, but certainly not beyond that vision of the industry coming together to protect our customers against us against this very important Scourge.   Dan Seguin  09:58 Very interesting, Jared. What types of scams are appearing most often? Can you provide some real life examples? And has the global pandemic altered scam activity and its frequency?   Jared Lawrence  10:14 Excellent question. And so at the core, the scam that was the main focus of utilities back in 2015, when I started our investigation at Duke Energy and, and it remains today, it's that classic disconnection threat scam. So a customer gets a call from out of the blue from somebody purporting to be a representative of the utility. And they state that due to some sort of problem with the account or some sort of problem with a payment being returned by a bank or some, you know, some fabricated excuse like that, the customer's account is now overdue, and there is a disconnection technician in route to turn off the customer's power. Usually it's power. Sometimes it's other utilities, but almost, it's almost always power within the next 30 to 45 minutes. And so the customer needs to act they need to go purchase typically a prepaid card and call the scammers back with that information within the next 30 to 45 minutes to prevent disconnection. That was their bread and butter back in 2015. It's still our bread and butter today. What's interesting is that we've seen little variations in scammers. They're attuned to what's happening in in their market, so to speak, and how utilities and law enforcement and others are reacting to their tactics. And so they've tried certain things. So for example, they're one of the things that we saw at Duke Energy was that when our smart meters were being deployed in each of our territories, and in our, in our six electric states, the scammers at various times would attempt to kind of take they change the tactic and focus on a meter deposit that the customer had failed to pay something that wouldn't typically show up on a bill and that kind of thing. Kind of trying to capitalize on that on the headlines associated with the utility. And with utility at that particular time, those didn't work very well. So we tend to see the attempt to collect that meter deposit, that scam fell off pretty quickly. We've seen the scammers attempt text and email. sporadically, those don't seem to work very well either, because they don't have the same level of immediacy that a phone call has. So those those tend to flare up at times and then die out on their own. We've seen the scammers explore different payment channels. So we've had some customers report that the scammers have asked them to pay in Bitcoin, which, of course is absurd, because I don't know about Hydro Ottawa, but The Duke Energy certainly does not accept Bitcoin. We've seen them requests zelle transfers, which are actually traceable. So that would work very well for the banks. We've seen a several scammers recently try and use cash app. But their bread and butter has historically been prepaid cards and you know, one or two prepaid cards in particular brands of which I won't mention on on this podcast. But there there are one or two that stand out above all the rest is being particularly susceptible to fraud.   Dan Seguin  13:25 Are there any specific population groups who are frequently targeted? How can we, as a community offer better support to these groups? What's the best line of defense?   Jared Lawrence  13:40 So, you know, again, as with everything that I've seen in the six years that I've been heavily engaged in this topic, they tend to go in cycles. And so in the beginning, it seemed to be random, the victims, the targets seemed to be random. And so since it was random, there was you know, statistically the vast majority of utility customers are residential. And so there was a heavy focus on residential customers. What we started to see is and obviously, I've never spoken with a scammer to validate this. But what we started to see was that the scammers started to use tools, probably online maps, you know, simple tools like Google Maps, etc. to determine what were the businesses in a particular area and how close were they to some of the retail outlets that sold the prepaid cards that they like to use. And the reason they were focusing on businesses is if if they caught up a residential customer, and they would say to a residential customer, you're behind on your bill, you I was two months Well, they really couldn't ask for more than you know, a couple 100 bucks because a typical residential customer knows that they're your average utility bills not going to be that much more than 100 bucks unless it's the heat of the summer that are the depths of winter, but they recognize that they started calling restaurants, veterinary clinics and and others that are fairly energy intensive that they could ask for 1000s of dollars, and it would work because at the same time they would they would get into a rhythm where they would call these particular businesses during what they knew to be, for example, a restaurants busiest part of the day during the lunch hour, a veterinarians busiest type of day, right mid afternoon when they might have had dogs and cats under sedation, a drycleaners busiest time of the day, right around five o'clock in the you know, post the rush hour period when people are dropping in to pick up their dry cleaning, things like that. The scammers became very intelligent about, again on that social engineering aspect of focusing in on the times when their victims were most vulnerable. What we've seen what we've tended to see and I do think that these scammers are paying attention and noticing the impacts from utilities united against scams, in that over the course of the last few years, we have forged a partnership with an organization called Somos, which is the toll free administrator, the toll free number administrator for basically all toll free phone lines across North America. And, and what started happening was that we were getting there, you know, through this partnership, we were having the scammers when 1-800 numbers disconnected. And the scammer started to recognize this and so they have migrated toward more of a robo calling model now, where they call up and they say instead of asking a customer to call back, they say press this number to speak to you know, press one to speak to somebody about your about your delinquent bill, for example. And, and because they're using robo calls now, it's much more random again. And so we're seeing a shift back toward a higher purpose preponderance of residential customers. Now all along we have seen particularly with utility scam, that Spanish speaking populations and Spanish speaking businesses in particular have been more vulnerable. And I think there's two reasons for this: The first of which is that in my conversations with law enforcement in my direct conversations with these scammers, because I talk to them a lot when I'm calling up to validate that they're using fraud numbers, I call them up and try and play along and pretend I'm a victim. They tend to be they seem to be originating from Spanish speaking countries, most likely in Latin America, and law enforcement has corroborated that. And sometimes when I call them up, they're actually answering the line in Spanish, meaning that they are targeting Spanish businesses in particular, at that particular time, and they seem to be much more fluent in Spanish than they are in English at times as well. So and so the reason that we think that these, this customer group is more vulnerable is because there is a, there's a natural language barrier between the routine communications that they would receive from utility versus the communications that they're receiving from these scammers. And therefore, that might cut through some of the awkwardness that a that a native English speaker might pick up on if they were being contacted by somebody who isn't an eight native English speaker, originally versus being a native Spanish speaker. And the second two is that there just seems to be a little bit of less of a reflex of distrust amongst, amongst Spanish speaking businesses and Spanish speaking community and a little bit of a greater trust in official communications, or official sounding communications rather than a reflex to immediately distrust something that is, hits them out of the blue. And so we have seen a disproportionate number of Spanish speaking businesses being targeted and showing up on our victims list.   Dan Seguin  19:00 So in general, Jared, is there anything customers can do to pro actively guard themselves or their loved ones against scams?   Jared Lawrence  19:10 Great question. So I am a big fan of these anti robo call services such as no Robo, it's the one that we use in our house. I'm not a paid spokesman for no robo. But I do actually I have through the scammer come to know the founder and president of No Robo. And, and so that, and from the car registries that he shared with us, we are seeing that they're doing a good job of blocking a lot of these scam calls that are coming from, they're coming from these criminals. So I recommend that because that'll just reduce the likelihood that households or businesses that these calls are making it through the filters in the first place. The second thing is really just to know the signs so you know the basics signs are that a utility. The first communication you get from a utility about a potential delinquent bill or a problem with a payment is not going to be 30 minutes before you're disconnected. And a true utility representative is not going to insist on one particular type of payment, they're not going to make you drive down the street to a local retail outlet, get a specific thing tell you not to talk to the clerk and then force you to come back and make that payment quickly. And if you express any doubts at all about the legitimacy of the call, a legitimate utility representative will be more than happy to have you contact the utility directly using the published number, the public contact channels on your actual bill versus what they give you. Whereas a scammer is going to resist all of those because they know once you do that the gig is up. So that's really those are the key there, you want to want to reduce your vulnerability or your your exposure to scam communications in the first place. And then if they do get through, just be highly educated on the signs.   Dan Seguin  21:12 Okay, great segue to this next important question. What are some ways to identify a utility scammer over the phone? Maybe via text message? And the scariest of them all at your door? What are the red flags to look out for and the best way to deal with them?   Jared Lawrence  21:36 So again, I did I think that the number one thing to keep in mind is that it is very rare that you will get an urgent communication from your utility, about a billing problem. That's it with disconnection being imminent, out of the blue, within the next 45 minutes, that that will be the first communication. So a utility scammer typically is is somebody who contacts you with a sense of urgency, and there's a lot of pressure built into that communication, they will then resist, they will try and give you talk you out of seeking independent verification of identity. So whether it's a call that you get, if you say well Do you mind if I just hang up and call the number back on your official website just to validate this, a scammer will try and talk you out of that they'll say something like the drivers already on his way. Or if it's even worse, if they're at your door. And you and you open the door and you are not expecting them, a utility representative will be more than happy to allow you to take the time to call the Customer Care Center to to validate their legitimacy. Whereas a criminal will try and convince you that something is very urgent and you don't have the time to do so. Those are some of the some of the most obvious signs of a criminal who's trying to pressure you into taking action before you have time to think and get the facts straight. The other thing to keep in mind, too, is and we've seen that we saw this from the very beginning when going back to that first customer care app or raising that concern because she felt that she was relaying the customers felt that their that their information had been compromised when in fact it wasn't just because a a somebody posing as utility rep seems to have your info, it does not make them legitimate. Unfortunately, most information about us as individuals as consumers is available out there on the web. That's just one of the sad facts about about, about modern life. Additionally, though, these scammers are are brilliant social engineers, and they're very good at making you think that they have legitimate information. So even if they a scammer calls up and they quote something that sounds like your legitimate balance, don't trust them. In fact, one of the one of the early cases that got that we researched that first month when we when we deployed that SWAT team I was talking about that really convinced me of the nature of this problem was we had one particular customer who had reported that the scammer had their balance their actual balance. And we looked at the account. And sure enough, the the information that the customer had reported to us did align with what their most recent bill was. And so we talked to the customer and we said well tell us how the conversation went. And they started to think about it. And what they what they finally recalled was that the scammer called them up and said there was a problem with your last payment your payment did not go through the the victim and said well wait a minute. Let me go I happen to be on my online banking system right now. Let me look right here. And I see my payment for $271.30 or whatever it was. It went through on October, October 4 or whatever it was. And then the scammer says no, I see your payment for 200 $71.30 it actually got rejected the next day, October 5 by your bank. And so now the person who was caught off guard by this call in the first place is thinking, Oh, this person's must be legitimate because he has a system right there and my payment is in it. And he knows all about my transaction? Well, no, you told them, you know, they tricked you into giving them that information. And so that's the other key is to never ever volunteer account information or personal information. If they, if somebody calls you up out of the blue, and they are legitimate, they will understand if you don't want to volunteer information, they will invite give you the opportunity to call back their official customer care line. But if if somebody calls you have a blue and starts asking for information about you, that is another clear sign that scam is is likely on, you're likely the victim of a scam.   Dan Seguin  25:51 Okay, worst case scenario. Now, let's say I'm a customer who fell victim to a scam, losing money and possibly personal information in process. What are my options? Is there anyone or anywhere specific that customers can turn to for help?   Jared Lawrence  26:12 There's some good news, but a lot of not good news to share on that front Dan. So the first thing I would recommend is if you have fallen victim, and if you have made a payment using any sort of you know, prepaid card or electronic payment channel, immediately call the fraud line associated with the payment method that you use to do it quickly. The reason is that, and I'm speaking about the prepaid cards in particular, the way these scammers work is that they're they're targeting multiple victims, you know, across the country at any given one time across the continent at any one time. And what they do is they they call you up, they trick you into making that payment. And, and basically in doing that they transfer your money from the card number you provide to a destination card that they're using to collect and use in quotes "launder" the funds. And then every few minutes, they sweep the money off of those cards. So there is typically a small window, where if the scammers have not liquidated those funds into the ether, that if you happen to call back, you might be able to get your money back. But you've got to move quickly because a lot of these payment channels that they use are attractive to scammers, particularly because they're non reversible. And, and so your timing has to be has to be very quick and very spot on with this. So that's that's the first thing to do. The second thing to do is to file a police report. Now, sadly, because these these criminals are typically perpetrating their crimes from offshore, they are not going to be reachable with local law enforcement. But nonetheless, it's important that you file a police report so that it enters the law enforcement database, it helps the various folks in law enforcement at the national level who are trying to create, you know, enough of a body of evidence to investigate these cases investigate these syndicates that are running these scams. And, and I'll also to mention that, for example, in the United Way to one one service here in North Carolina, and there are other organizations, they actually have resources that are available for victims of cybercrime and other frauds. So I would reach out to your local community assistance agency, if you have suffered any financial hardship as a result of being targeted, to determine what resources they have. I'm not aware of any that can restore the funds that you've lost, but they can maybe help you cope with any financial hardship that you're suffering in the near term as a result of being targeted. And then finally, you know, report the attempt to your utility because utility united against scams. We use this information to refine our strategies. We use this information for our engagement with our telecom partners, our engagement with law enforcement and government officials to him to support law enforcement efforts and to try and better shape public policy to protect customers against against these types of scams.   Dan Seguin  29:20 Now, maybe we can look at prevention. What are utility companies and police forces doing to help deter and fight against scammers? Can you tell us any success stories of scammers being deterred or better yet caught?   Jared Lawrence  29:37 Okay, well, I can actually share with you a couple of instances. These weren't directly related to the utility imposter scam. But the larger is the Canadian revenue associations that when CRA stands for Yes. So larger CRA scams, we celebrated when we read articles back in the fall of 2018, and again in 2019, where the Royal Canadian Mounted Police executed successful stings of scam call centers, basically running those texts, those tech scams against Canadian citizens. And in those timeframes. In one case, I believe they arrested 32 Indian nationals who were executing these scams out of a fraudulent call center. And another one, it was 28 criminals who were apprehended in those busts. And really the key there is again, you know, just countless reports of victims, each one a small victim of crime just building up to this very large case. There was also a recent case, in the US with the Internal Revenue Service scam, where I believe that the individual was arrested back in 2017 or 2018, but he was just convicted back in November of 2020, the ringleader, again another Indian call center operation that was running this IRS scam. And the ringleader there was sentenced to 20 years in prison and fined $9 million. So there are there are people in law enforcement at the national level, both in Canada and the US, who are who are paying attention and are specifically focusing on these, you know, very lucrative scams, these very lucrative criminal operations and building cases and seeking international partnerships to bust these operations. I think that those two are an example of of operations that were that were claiming hundreds of millions, if not more, dollars in ill gotten gains. And so they're probably slightly bigger fish in these utility scans. I don't I think these utility scammers are probably collecting millions of dollars a year but not hundreds of billions of dollars a year which is why these other tax related scams are gaining or gaining more attention.   Dan Seguin  32:16 Okay, thanks for sharing. Maybe Jared, tell us what is at the heart or lack thereof, of a scammers intention? What are some of the behaviors that are evidence of this?   Jared Lawrence  32:32 So, you know, one of the things that we have spent a lot of time understanding is what is this is utility imposter scammers M.O., Are they spending a lot of time researching their victims to create a really, you know, compelling story that increases their hit rate, or are they really they're going for high volume, low yield, but making their money off of volume. And it's really the latter. And so what I noticed very quickly, in the various countless times that I've called these fraud numbers to validate the phone numbers to get them shut down, frankly, is that the scammers very quickly try to ascertain whether you are a likely victim. So if you want to talk with them about anything about address change, sometimes I make up that I'm calling about an outage. They will immediately try and turn it into a conversation about an outstanding debt that would that is supposedly going to trigger a disconnection. And if you don't, signal any sort of gullibility toward it at that particular time, they're going to end the call really quickly. They'll try and do it in a way that makes it seem polite enough that you'll still walk away from that thinking that it was legitimate utility interaction. But in reality, you once you step back, you realize they didn't give me any customer service at all. They were they were just trying to figure out if I was, if I was likely mark for them or not. That's the biggest one. The second biggest one is that, you know, we, our customer care agents go through countless hours of training in order to how to maintain professionalism, how to be attentive to customers to listen to their needs. The scammers, they get frustrated really quickly and and if you attempt to call them out, they will very quickly turn on you and say some things that are very rude things that can't even be repeated on podcast. So that is another obvious giveaway is that if the if the person you're talking to starts to become rude, aggressive, or exerts pressure in any way, they're not utility representative.   Dan Seguin  34:44 Okay. Now, in contrast, tell us what's at the heart of any utility as they engage with customers. How can customers use these contracting intentions as a litmus test?   Jared Lawrence  34:58 So recognizing that these scammers might listen to this podcast, I've always a little bit careful to give away all of the strategies I use to validate that when I'm calling them up that they're indeed scammers. However, the obvious signs of a trained utility rep are number one, they're going to be attentive to your needs. Number two, they are not going to try and pressure you in anything, because our goal is to make sure that you are a happy customer that you're getting the service that you need. And if you happen to be facing financial hardship or difficulty paying, we're not going to threaten you with this connection, we're going to offer up payment arrangements, ways to structure your utility debt so that you can maintain service with us, the last thing that a utility professional has to do is to see your account be disconnected for non payment, our goal is to try and work with you as much as we can to keep you engaged in to work within your means with deferred payment arrangements and things like that. So if they if the person on the line is not really working with you, then that is a and they had called you first and that is you know, a pretty obvious sign right there that they're not a not a legitimate utility representative. Secondly, also, as I mentioned before, a scammer is not going to want want to spend any time talking with you about anything other than you are making a payment to them quickly. So if you have questions about say value added products and services, or if you, you know, are having service, you had a service disruption due to a storm or something like that. You can always ask a question about that and see how they handle it. And if they handle it with knowledge, and they actually are able to are showing a willingness to take the time to understand your issue, then that's a more than likely a legitimate utility. Utility representative. If, however, they constantly bring it back to your outstanding your fictitious outstanding debt, then you know, you're dealing with a scammer.   Dan Seguin  36:59 Finally, Jared, what does success look like for utilities united against scams? What is your hope for the next 5 or 10 years?   Jared Lawrence  37:12 So, you know, I read my originally instead of this Dan kind of changes I thought about a little bit more, especially as we have our five year anniversary of utility united against scams coming up just in just next week, actually. And, you know, I was thinking the knee jerk reaction reaction would be to say, Well, I'd like I'd like us to basically put these scammers out of business so that we don't, so we can disband so that there's no need for utilities united against scams. I think that that is a you know, a little bit too rosy of course, I think that I do like to make these utility imposter scams go away. And then just maintain kind of maintain the collaborative, but maintain it in such a way where we're just touching base sharing for information about anything that might be looking suspicious in our markets, and making sure that we are keeping scam activity at a minimum and keeping law enforcement policymakers fully engaged so that scams don't flare back up to the problem that they are right now. So my goal really is to is to achieve that combination of policy, solutions, as well as sheer operational tactics with partners in telecom and the prepaid card space in the other financial mechanism that the scammers use to shut down the loopholes so that this utility imposter scam goes away. And then utilities united against scams is a organization that just meets periodically to keep tabs on the market and make sure that things aren't flaring up again.   Dan Seguin  38:51 Okay. This is it. Jared, are you ready to close us off with some rapid fire questions?   Jared Lawrence  38:59 Sure. Hit me, Dan.   Dan Seguin  39:01 Let me start with this first one. What is your favorite word?   Jared Lawrence  39:06 My favorite word this year is "yes". And I say that is because we did we accomplish so many things on the fly, responding to the pandemic, and the important things that we as utilities had to do to help take care of our communities last year, that previously the answer would have been either No, or it's going to take us a long time to figure that out. So I feel like I and the rest of the industry have been opened up to the power of possibility and so this is the year of of answering all those possibilities with Yes.   Dan Seguin  39:44 Great answer. What is the one thing you can't live without?   Jared Lawrence  39:50 My morning workout.   Dan Seguin  39:51 Moving on. What habit or hobby Have you picked up during shelter in place?   Jared Lawrence  39:58 I started making mead. It is, I find it delicious. I'm not sure that those of my family or my wife have the same opinion. But I would.   Dan Seguin  40:11 Okay, if you could have one superpower, what would it be?   Jared Lawrence  40:16 The ability to sleep through the night without waking up for a variety of reasons.   Dan Seguin  40:21 If you could turn back time, and talk to your 18 year old self, what would you tell him?   Jared Lawrence  40:27 I would tell him not to be so shy I was, I was fairly shy. In my pre professional life, and even the early years of being in the professional world, and I've come to learn that you missed out on a lot by being shy.   Dan Seguin  40:43 And lastly, what do you currently find most interesting in your sector?   Jared Lawrence  40:51 Wow. So there are so many interesting things going on. But I think what is most interesting to me, and the reason why I'm excited to be in this industry for at least another 15 years before I'm ready to retire, is that societies are have made it one of their central goals to achieve carbon neutrality. And utilities are at the center of that not only in terms of hitting our goals within our companies, but being the ones best positioned to offer solutions to help major industries that are our customers help achieve their carbon neutral goals. And so I think the amount of opportunity and the number of interesting challenges that we face in the utility industry on that front is very exciting to me, and one of the reasons why I'm thrilled to continue to be utility leader.   Dan Seguin  41:44 So true, and well said, Jared. Okay, well, we've reached the end of another episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. Again, thank you so much for joining me today. I really hope you had a lot of fun.   Jared Lawrence  41:58 I did. This was fantastic. Dan, I hope you can tell I am really passionate about fighting scammers, fighting criminals who take advantage of utility customers and so I welcome any opportunity to talk about this topic.   Dan Seguin  42:13 Thank you for joining us today. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. For past episodes. Make sure you visit our website hydroottawa.com/podcast blog. Lastly, if you found value in this podcast, be sure to subscribe. Anyway, this podcast is a wrap. Cheers, everyone.

On this episode of the Yogi Show the boys dive deep with Jade Alectra! Get ready to laugh, be inspired, and maybe cry a time or 2 on this episode. Jade is an inspiration to so many on Instagram and beyond. She shows up for everything in life with her heart in her hand ready to pour it out and go all in. Jade is an Orange County based yoga instructor, international retreat leader, and bad ass human. She shares some incredible insight on experiences and breakthroughs she has witnessed in her workshops on eye gazing and the death meditation. Buckle up, cause all the feels are headed your way! You can find Jade on Instagram pouring her heart out @jadealectra. Follow her for inspo @jadealectra. Support us on Patreon at www.patreon.com/theyogishow Learn more: Visit Pedro Luna at www.yogawithpedro.com Visit Yogi Bryan at www.yogibryan.com Yogi Show Website at www.theyogishow.com Empower Yourself - 7 Day Journey Through the Chakras click HERE Music in this episode is from @djtazrashid. You can check out more info on Taz and where to find him at www.djtazrashid.com.

Alectra and Music Evolution with the top 25 year end songs from 1976 aired Mar 8 2019

Jade Alectra is a yogi, a healer, and an artist. She is one of the most real and raw people I know and in this episode, we dive deep into her own personal traumas and tragedies. As my friend, Lady Gaga, sings, "We're far from the shallows now...." Find and follow her on Instagram here. Read her favorite book here. Or, if you want to do some yoga with her, click here and check out her YouTube videos. She's amazing and I adore her words and her work. ____________________________________________________________________ Follow me on Instagram @LongDistanceLoveBombs: https://www.instagram.com/longdistancelovebombs Each week, I share a personal story as well as my favorite books, tunes, articles, and ideas. Sign up for my weekly newsletter here: http://eepurl.com/T0l91. It's easy and takes five seconds. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/longdistancelovebombs/message

Alectra and Music Evolution with the top 25 year end songs from 1975 aired Feb 22 2019

Born in the middle of a literal Earthquake, and named after a guitar, Jade Alectra wasn’t given much choice to not shake up this world with no stone left unturned. Raised in Orange County California, she attended 12 years of Catholic School that left her with more questions than answers. Finding her love of basketball and pole vaulting, she began weight lifting heavier and heavier until she dislocated her knee and gained 50 pounds, eating herself deep into depression. On her last rope, a yoga teacher suggested she try a class. She lasted 10 minutes and angry and frustrated, ran out of the class. It took four more classes of leaving ten minutes in until she finally stayed. Somewhere along the journey, Jade discovered that beneath her anger, were her wounds. And beneath her wounds was the true depth that we all have been conditioned to run from. Yoga was the mirror to help her heal and feel past hurts, traumas, and heartbreaks. The act of finding and creating space in the body impacted and inspired her so much so that she decided to become a teacher to help guide people home to themselves. Emotional based teaching is her specialty, with an emphasis on rather than the age old, empty your mind and leave what’s happening in your life outside of the studio, bring all of that shit INTO the room, ONTO your mat, and work THROUGH it in your body. Yoga saved her life, and one student at a time, Jade's intention for teaching is to help awaken what’s been sleeping, and fan their flames to continue on their path to the true journey of self acceptance, love and growth. Follow her journey on Instagram @jadealectra   For more info on the host, visit, www.marianbacoluba.com and follow Marian on Instagram @mbacoluba. Enjoy the show and please don’t forget to RATE, REVIEW and SUBSCRIBE! I would absolutely love to help you step into your power and gain the clarity and confidence about your life and business! My gift to all of you is a 30 min Thriver Clarity Call. Schedule here: https://calendly.com/mbacoluba/30min-call Take a screen shot of your review and DM it to me on Instagram @mbacoluba or email it to me at podcast@marianbacoluba.com and I will give you a complimentary oracle card reading.

Utility companies are no stranger to the multitude of challenges that present themselves in times of crisis. As a result, they have a ton of real-time crisis management experience that others can learn from. Alectra is one such organization. With a 1,250 m2 (or 2,000 km2) service territory delivering power to approximately one million customers in Ontario, Canada, Alectra deals with issues and crises on a regular basis. In this episode, Blair Peberdy, Vice-President of Government and Corporate Relations at Alectra, joins the Invincible Brand Podcast to share the many crisis management lessons he has learned throughout his career. About this episode It’s always great to learn from the mistakes, successes, and lessons learned by others—hopefully saving you from having to learn them the hard way. In this episode, Blair shares the structure behind Alectra’s crisis ready program, along with the many lessons the company has learned throughout its years of managing dozens of real-life and simulated incidents. This episode provides a behind the scenes look at the different strategies and tactics that Alectra has implemented into its crisis ready program. These strategies and tactics continue to help the organization further strengthen its crisis ready culture, and the best part is that each of the lessons that Blair shares within this conversation are directly applicable to your organization and team. This episode explores: The multi-tiered prongs that facilitate Alectra’s crisis communication to its different key stakeholders. The structure of the company’s crisis management governance, including the different roles they’ve designed and how they ensure these roles are scalable with employee turnover and the growth of the company. The role that crisis simulations play in helping Alectra continuously strengthen its crisis ready program and its team’s skills. A look at Alectra’s post-crisis debriefing structure and processes. How social media has changed the crisis management landscape. Connect with Blair and Alectra: Email Blair with any questions: blair.peberdy@alectra.com Learn more about Alectra at alectra.com

In today's episode, we explore the elusive experience of self-love; how can it be cultivated and WHY is it so challenging? Part One features an honest and raw interview with Jade Alectra. We discuss Jade's childhood experiences with feminine identity, social perceptions, what she does to get back to self-love if she slips up and how essential it is to find sustainable self-love BEFORE you dive into a serious relationship.     To find out more about Break Method, download show notes + workbook handout PDF, please visit: www.breakmethod.com To BOOK Bizzie Gold on your show or for public speaking engagements, please contact: contact@bizziegold.com or head over to www.bizziegold.com        

Revisiting the answers from past guests answering the final question of every episode:  "How would you advise our listeners to create their own magic?" Featuring: Trevor Hall @trevorhallmusic Jim Kwik @jimkwik In-Q @inqlife Emma Mildon @emma.mildon Koi Fresco @koifresco Shaman Durek @shamandurek Jordan Younger @thebalancedblonde FullyRaw Kristina @fullyrawkristina Heather and Timmi of @energymuse Jenna Zoe @jennazoedaily Jade Alectra @jadealectra Bree Melanson @bree_melanson Light Watkins @lightwatkins   Oh! + that time Raquelle interviewed @alliemichellel   CONNECT WITH ALLIE + RAQUELLE  @alliemichellel - Explorations of a Cosmic Soul @raquellemantra yourownmagic.life   JOIN THE SOUL TRIBE Secret Facebook Group  Join our Soul Tribe Membership Site for our guided meditations, manifestations and other metaphysical tools for $4.44  meditations, manifestations and other metaphysical tools for $4.44: https://yourownmagic.life/soul-tribe-membership-only   FREE MEDITATION  by Allie + Raquelle for rating + reviewing this podcast send your screenshot to info@yourownmagic.life (also to enter HUM Giveaway)    THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS THRIVE MARKET for $60 free organic groceries: to https://www.thrivemarket.com/yourownmagic -- plus free shipping and a free 30-day trial (We love their essential oils + vegan/gluten-free options!)  HUM NUTRITION 20% off your order https://www.humnutrition.com -- CODE: MAGIC (Favorites: Flatter Me + Gut Instinct for our digestion. Mint Chocolate Chip Raw Beauty Powder)

Allie interviews one of her dearest friends, Jade Alectra. A powerhouse yoga teacher, healer and empowered goddess who holds nothing back, and is not afraid to not being liked for it. Jade always shares her rawest story and unapologetic truth. In this episode, Jade sheds light on the collective pain with her story of depression, suicide, abuse, breaking the mold of traditional yoga, and applying the strength, resilience, self-honor, and intuitive guidance she learned on the mat... off the mat.   CONNECT WITH JADE   jadealectra.com modernyogahealer.com @jadealectra YouTube   CONNECT WITH ALLIE + RAQUELLE  @alliemichellel @raquellemantra yourownmagic.life   JOIN THE SOUL TRIBE Secret Facebook Group  Join our Soul Tribe Membership Site for our guided meditations, manifestations and other metaphysical tools for $4.44  meditations, manifestations and other metaphysical tools for $4.44: https://yourownmagic.life/soul-tribe-membership-only   FREE MEDITATION  by Allie + Raquelle for rating + reviewing this podcast send your screenshot to info@yourownmagic.life (also to enter HUM Giveaway)    THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS HUM NUTRITION 20% off your order https://www.humnutrition.com -- CODE: MAGIC (Favorites: Flatter Me + Gut Instinct for our digestion. Mint Chocolate Chip Raw Beauty Powder) FOUR SIGMATIC for 15% off of our favorite magical mushroom elixir coffee https://foursigmatic.com/soultribe--CODE: soultribe (A+R's Favorites: Lion's Mane, Cordyceps + Reishi Elixirs)   

Opponents of the LRT project have filed an official complaint against the mayor saying that his membership on the Alectra Utilities board of directors is a direct conflict of interest. Some councilors have decided to team up to pay for a city wide poll to gauge support for the LRT project. This comes a little over a week before a pivotal meeting on the project. Carol Lazich, Anti-LRT, Gilbert's Big and TallJason Farr. City Councillor, Ward 2, City of Hamilton Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath is warning that the rapid rise of hydro rates is going to affect Ontario's hospitals and that it's a threat to the healthcare system.Andrea Horwath, Leader of the Ontario NDP. The federal budget will be dropping at about 4:30pm today. What are things we should be watching for with this budget?

Hamilton's mayor wants to raise money for a Hamilton gateway sign. ALSO; The mayor was on hand for the unveiling of a merged electrical utility that will serve GTHA customers called Alectra.   Guest: Fred Eisenberger, Mayor for the City of Hamilton.   Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has been taking the brunt of the backlash over hydro prices. Prime Minister Trudeau has made it clear that hydro bills are not his to have a say over, that that power lies with the provinces.   Guest: John Yakabuski, PC Energy Critic in Ontario.   Only a few weeks after OPEC started to cut production of oil, US producers are ramping up their shale gas business.   Guest: Dan McTeague. Former Liberal MP and Consumer Affairs Critic, Analyst, gasbuddy.com

Hamilton's mayor wants to raise money for a Hamilton gateway sign. ALSO; The mayor was on hand for the unveiling of a merged electrical utility that will serve GTHA customers called Alectra.   Guest: Fred Eisenberger, Mayor for the City of Hamilton.

I love this mix!  It features some hot new tunes from some of my favorite artists...and some hot songs from future favorite artists.  Enjoy! Track List (1:08:28) Turn up the radio (R3hab surrender remix) - Madonna Wings (Alias extended mix) - Little Mix (Blow me) One last kiss (Martini Crew Club mix) - P!nk Taking over (Alias extended mix) - Lawson My house (WaWa Club mix) - Julia Shlippert I'm on a roll (Smash mode extended) - Stefano Get busy (Kat Krazy extended mix) - Rude Kid (Drop dead) Beautiful (Edson Pride remix) - Britney Spears Home run (Kat Krazy extended mix) - Misha B Wide awake (Dark Intensity remix) - Katy Perry Falling under (Mig & Rizzo remix) - Alectra Now or never (Jason Nevins remix) - Outasight Good time (Liam Keegan remix) - Owl City featuring Carly Rae Jepsen