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Jan Nimick of Pacific Gas and Electric: Long-Term Planning Amid Unpredictable Supply Chain Disruptions
Jan Nimick (right) during a field visit.
T
he Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) is a major California utility that serves around 16 million people with a portfolio in which hydropower plays a major role. The supply chain disruptions caused by the COVID‑19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have caused sudden raw material price increases and availability issues, among other shocks, for PG&E and its suppliers and contractors. PG&E is considering possible responses that range from helping vendors purchase commodities in advance to sourcing more products from the United States. Hydro Leader spoke with Jan Nimick, PG&E’s vice president for power generation, about what the global disruptions mean for California’s largest utility. Hydro Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.
14 | HYDRO LEADER | July/August 2022
hydroleadermagazine.com
PHOTO COURTESY OF PG&E.
Jan Nimick: I joined the Navy right out of high school as part of its nuclear power program. When I got out of the Navy, I worked as a boiler operator for the State of California while I initially went to college at the California
Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. I then started doing some contract work for the local Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. In 1997, I took a job as a nuclear power plant operator, which was my first full-time job at PG&E. A couple of years later, when I finished my engineering degree, I worked as a senior reactor operator. Eventually, I became the director of operations, then the station director, and then the senior director of engineering, technical, and emergency services. In that position, I was responsible for engineering projects, physical security, cybersecurity, fuels purchasing, fuels storage—basically all the things that support a power plant other than running it. The Camp Fire occurred on November 8, 2018, and the company did a lot of work on the community wildfire safety program. I volunteered for a brief rotation to help out with that work. I spent about 5 months organizing the inspections of all the distribution poles to identify items that needed to be repaired. I am currently PG&E’s vice president of power generation. I am responsible for all the generation that is not nuclear. The hydro fleet has about 160 dams,
