mr. torres. miss joy ditto is the president and ceo of utilities technology council. welcome. mr. thomas galloway is the president and ceo for the north american transmission forum. we thank you. and the panel will be rounded off by mr. timothy yardley, who is the senior associate director of technology and work force development at the university of illinois at urbana champagne. so we have a great panel here this morning, and pleased to hear your contribution to this important subject. mr. ortiz, if you would like to lead off. we would ask that you limit your comments to about five minutes. your full statement will be incorporated as part of the record. >> thank you, madam chairman. chairman murkowski, ranking member cantwell, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. my name is david ortiz. i am the acting director of the office of electric reliability at the federal energy regulatory commission. as here as a staff witness and my remarks do not necessarily reflect those -- do not necessarily reflect the views of the commission nor any individual c

mr. torres. welcome. >> chairman murkowski, ranking member cantwell and members of the committee i've echoed the sentiments expressed already about hurricane michael anna florence and the cruise there as well as the people affected by the storm. we wish them to be. actually honored to testify today and i would like to begin asking a few rhetorical questions. how many people know that utilities operate their own sophisticated telecommute asian network emac they have done so for over 70 years. how many know that these networks are integral to the low reliability and resilience of the electric grid, including the careful and delicate process of restoring power after a widespread outage. finally, how many people know the policies made by an agency in the federal communications commission seemingly unrelated to the oversight of the electric. can in fact resilience. even having represented electric utilities for 15 years time i became utc ceo i did not fully appreciate the key nature of medications to

mr. torres, i may ask you a little bit about how you seep battery storage being an important component. i have been there. a great community. >> thank you for visiting. >> you're welcome. [laughter] >> increasing resiliency overall it can potentially provide a resource to help power up some of the smaller generators to get those kick started. it can also help with smoothing some of that transition as we bring some of the various resources on. a lot of opportunity and map particular space. looking at how systems work in conjunction where energy storage works in conjunction right now. >> is that an issue of having a coordinated response? making sure there coordinated as they come back on? >> it is very, very important. >> we get about 25% of our energy from wind and solar. there are lots of reasons for us to care about research and advancing battery storage. this is an area -- learning about this strikes me as very important. what others on the panel like to comment about this? you talked about a utility in southern california there was able to use battery storage. >> as part of our revie

mr. torres and he would say "there are only two things i have to do, stay black and die. ". he didn't repeat stories, but that expression he repeated a lot. >> i remember one that goes along with that, i remember arguing with him about a case, and he said thank you very much, you know, and his hand up. "let me try again." and i did this a couple times and finally, justice marshal, "let me say 2 years ago you said this. and if you go the way you want to go, that you are proposing to go, it will be just completely contradicting what you said 2 years ago." and he looks at me and he says "do i have to be a fool all my life?" . >> before i forget, i want to say about the stories, as many as there were, i never heard one in which he was the hero. he just told me what happened. >> you had so sort of look it up afterwards to find out. >> i mean, he was not self-grandizing in any way. he just wanted to pass it on to us a real sense of what it was like for him. but many years later he did sit down with lon williams and told these stories that he hadn't talked about for publication bef

therefore, how can you have mr torres as the president of the housing authority and now he has been selected, like you have, bad selection, london, i have to tell you. i agree to disapprove. you have two individuals that come from oewd that are protecting d. you know who i am talking about. somebody there. i am so glad that mr pestis -- mr peskin, the master of legislation is using the real thing. i am glad i'm here to get all this information. i am appalled at city hall. i am appalled. and i want to talk to h.u.d. they have the money. h.u.d. controls everything. that is a federal government. that is why i want f.b.i. to investigate city hall. that is all. >> are there any other public comments on this item? saying none, public comment is closed. >> thank you to the folks in the housing authority and the mayor 's office of housing and the budget and legislative analyst and the controller's office for spending your afternoon with us. i think where we need to focus is on how the transition process of s.f. ha to the city will work i would like to have some oversight over that and i would like t

when we widen a sidewalk as director torres noted and some speakers including mr. jordan, a 32-year resident, thank you, sir for coming down and offering us your perspective, it's helpful. different issues arise on the sidewalk. in the process of widening will we coordinate with d.p.w. and other agencies to make sure they are treating this sidewalk the way you treat a 15-foot sidewalk as opposed to the previous sidewalk? >> i think the project has already engaged with numerous other agencies. there's been a large multiagency effort to deal with some of the street issues in this area for probably more than a year now. it's something that is coordinated out of 1011 turk, the city's emergency operation center. already the social services, the public health, police, public works resources that are focused on the area. and we will be working with public works and i would say more importantly, the community in terms of what you heard, i think speakers referenced in terms of design. and i think there's an opportunity to get to some of the earlier questions through design