WILMINGTON — The first time Phil Vavala walked in the offices at Delmarva Power in 1991, he was an engineering student that wasn’t quite sure of his path in life.
He had no background in utilities, but had signed on for the cooperative education program so he could get some hands-on learning for six months. Vavala struggled in academics, but some of his colleagues at the time took him under their wings.
Vavala had no idea that he would become the regional lead for the company’s operations in South Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Washington, D.C., more than 30 years later.
“I just wanted to be in the field. When I met the people there, I really started to see myself there. I enjoyed going to work every single day and I got excited about going in there,” Vavala told the Delaware Business Times. “I had a lot of mentors who told me I could do this. And to me, that said this was a place where they could see me be successful in the future. That was the catalyst.”
Pepco Holdings named Vavala as the new Vice President of Governmental and External Affairs and Region President for Atlantic City Electric and Delmarva Power in early July. Doug Mokoid held the position just before Vavala took over, replacing Gary Stockbridge who retired after three decades of service with the company.
With a century of service in the region, Delmarva Power serves 532,000 electric customers in Delaware and Maryland, as well as 138,000 natural gas customers in northern Delaware.
Throughout the years, the company has gone through several mergers and acquisitions and Vavala has played a part through it all. In his 33 years, he’s risen through the ranks as a senior supervising engineer, control room operations manager at Delmarva Power, regional electric operations directors and director of transmission at Pepco Holdings. In his last role as vice president of electric and gas operations, he oversaw the day-to-day operations for electric and gas distribution for thousands of customers.
“In 33 years, the business has changed quite a bit, but I’ve been offered the opportunity to work in so many different facets over my career. It’s like having a job every five to seven years,” he said. “But when you inherit an organization or responsibilities, it’s on that leader to leave it better than when you got there.”
When he looks to the future of utility providers, Vavala said among them is maintaining and growing the company as an economic engine for the Delaware region as well as serving as a facilitator of change. That could mean tapping into clean energy markets, continuing investments in system reliability to ensure customer service in events like the Cloudstrike update failure last month.
“We need to be agile and flexible, and sometimes what we think is the top priority isn’t and that can change over time,” he acknowledged. “We do test the cyber vulnerabilities on a routine basis, and we have processes to make sure the customer never feels it. But the threats are growing more sophisticated.”
Another opportunity Vavala sees is where Pepco Holdings can invest in integrating different energy sources. Over his career, he’s seen energy options grow more diversified, pointing to natural gas as a strong example of that. That arm of the company serves 140,000 customers in New Castle County through a distribution main that runs through the county.
“The grid of the future is going to behave differently than the traditional electric and gas grid. We’re going to need not only dynamic technologies to handle it, we’ll also need to develop new technical skills for the engineers of tomorrow,” he said. “Testing and training that new talent is a pretty big challenge utilities face.”
Vavala sees that investment in the workforce as continuing partnerships with education systems in Delaware, particularly Delaware State University, work to meet that moment.
“It’s critical for us to think about utilities as economic engines rather than just a transactional relationship. We’re promoting the creation of jobs and that opportunity to learn those skills,” he said.
Reflecting on working with Stockbridge, who was renowned for his lifetime of service working with nonprofits in Delaware, Vavala said that he would continue to follow in his footsteps when it came to community service.
“I would just sit in wonderment sometimes in [Stockbridge’s] ability to touch so many communities and show up,” he said. “We’re a trusted partner when it comes to our community. We’re more than just an old utility, and what we need to do is ramp up our performance in community spaces where we have been before.”
