Steve Hoffman
The Hoffman Story
Our Collective Culture
These days, almost everyone knows someone affected by a natural disaster. We all have a connection to wildfires or extreme weather; it’s become part of our collective culture. For our firm’s president, it was his former brother-in-law’s family who barely escaped the 2018 Paradise, California fire with their lives – losing their home, horses, and all their possessions – with absolutely no warning. And in 2020, his daughter and her mother were forced to evacuate from the deadly and destructive wildfire near Santa Cruz, California.
Steve Hoffman
2012-2013
Rewind to the one-year period beginning in the fall of 2012. Hurricane Sandy caused $70 billion in damage along the U.S. eastern seaboard, snipers attacked a California substation and knocked out most of the high-voltage transformers for months, and we passed through the solar maximum with its potential to impact the power system via geomagnetic disturbances. These events stimulated a flurry of resilience activity between utilities, nonprofit research, government, and private entities – in which Hoffman Power Consulting was intimately involved.
The Common Thread
The common thread is that our infrastructures are not adequately prepared to withstand or quickly recover from these events. And for a variety of reasons, the infrastructure that underpins everything – electric power – seems to be no better prepared than others. To harden power systems and improve post-event response and recovery, electric utilities complement their internal efforts with an army of expert product developers, system integrators, and consultants at scores of resilience product and service providers around the world. These providers also help electricity end users enhance their home and business resilience.
Our Job
At Hoffman Power Consulting, our team is committed to helping these solution providers do their jobs even better, by providing useful thought-leadership documents and communication materials. It’s our contribution to meeting the challenge that affects us all – enhancing electric power resilience.