Theodore Craver, President, Chairman and CEO, Edison International
As the chief of Edison International, the parent company of Southern California Edison, Ted Craver has a huge influence on how Southern California’s smart grid is evolving. Craver has held that position since 2008, and previously served as chairman and CEO of one of its subsidiaries, Edison Mission Group. He was also named chairman of the board of the Electric Power Research Institute in April 2011, giving him a position to influence the direction of that industry-funded group’s cutting-edge research.
Kevin Dasso, Senior Director, Smart Grid & Technology Integration, Pacific Gas & Electric
Kevin Dasso, a 30-year PG&E veteran, is tasked with integrating the utility’s multiple smart grid projects to deliver benefits that are greater than the sum of their individual parts. Those include such projects as integrating smart meter outage detection capability into PG&E’s ongoing distribution grid enhancement projects, including its $360 million Cornerstone Improvement program, as well as the next generation of distribution automation pilots for voltage regulation and distributed renewables integration. Integrating plug-in vehicle chargers with the smart grid, compressed air energy storage and a home area networking pilot are also on the agenda.
Dan Delurey, President, Demand Response and Smart Grid Coalition
As president of the Demand Response and Smart Grid Coalition, Dan Delurey is point man for those industries when it comes to seeking support from Congress and federal regulators. Delurey’s roots in coalition-building run deep: he’s also executive director at the Association for Demand Response and Smart Grid (ADS), a nonprofit organization of ISOs, utilities and other parties that share data and expertise among regions and participants in the smart grid and demand response fields. Delurey has more than 25 years of experience in the energy industry, much of it working on demand side issues, policies and programs for the electric industry.
Paul De Martini, Managing Director, Newport Consulting Group
Paul De Martini spent some seven years building Southern California Edison’s smart grid programs as leader of strategic planning, policy development and research and development. In April 2010, he took his industry heft to Cisco’s new push into smart grid, serving as CTO and VP of innovation for connected energy networks, where he took a role in Cisco’s expansion of its ambitions, via partnerships and acquisitions, to become the preeminent networker of the smart grid. His abrupt departure in January 2012 to take up business consulting on the grid architecture and business development strategies he helped develop at Cisco -- along with the departure of Cisco smart grid head Laura Ipsen the next month -- has led some industry observers to question whether Cisco is as serious about the smart grid as it says it is.
Stephan Dolezalek, Managing Director of Clean Tech practice, VantagePoint Venture Partners
As a managing director of VantagePoint Venture Partners’ clean technology group, Stephan Dolezalek oversees one of the broadest portfolios of greentech companies out there. The list is a who’s-who across industry sectors, including solar startups MiaSolé and BrightSource Energy, for which Dolezalek serves as board member, and green transportation challengers Better Place and Tesla Motors. On the smart grid side, VantagePoint has backed smart grid networking startup Trilliant and home energy management contestants Tendril Networks and AlertMe.
Eric Dresselhuys, Vice President, Markets, Silver Spring Networks
Eric Dresselhuys has been with Silver Spring Networks since it was founded in 2002, and has watched the startup take a leading position in smart meter networking in North America. While the company hasn’t yet taken the plunge of IPO, it has been quite active in the past few months, raising an additional $24 million from EMC and $30 million from Hitachi and forming strategic partnerships with both companies, as well as announcing some big new projects with Commonwealth Edison and Progress Energy, among others. Will 2012 be the year it finally takes the IPO plunge?
Mike Edmonds, Vice President of Strategic Solutions, S&C Electric Company
As S&C’s vice president of Strategic Solutions, Mike Edmonds is responsible for the strategy, direction and execution of S&C’s portfolio of solutions families. Prior to joining S&C in April 2010, Edmonds was vice president & general manager of Siemens USA Energy Automation group, responsible for the real-time solutions business for energy management systems, market systems, substation automation and protection control. Edmonds’ previous roles include vice president & general manager for PTI, whose products and services serve 130 countries in system planning, including early adoption and endorsement of the common information model (CIM). As intelligence continues to get pushed further and further to “the edge” of the grid, expect Mike’s team at S&C to continue to be in a leadership position with both best-of-industry technology and expertise.
John Estey, CEO, S&C Electric
As CEO of Chicago-based S&C Electric Company, John Estey leads a company on the forefront of distribution automation and energy storage management technology for the smart grid. As a liaison between the smart grid industry and policymakers, Estey has been tapped in the past to brief the White House on smart grid matters, and also sits on the board of directors of the National Electrical Manufacturers Association.
Ahmad Faruqui, Principal, Brattle Group
Ahmad Faruqui is a leading expert at the intersection of the smart grid and power consumers, including residential time-of-use and dynamic pricing and commercial and industrial demand response programs. He has helped the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission prepare a National Action Plan for Demand Response, and has testified before utility commissions across the U.S. on the ins and outs of bringing time-of-use pricing to residential customers, a move that could realize the promise of the mass market smart grid -- or cause some enormous political problems.
Gary Fromer, Senior Vice President of Demand Response, Constellation Energy
Gary Fromer was CEO of C-Power, the demand response company that was bought by Constellation Energy in 2009. Since then, he has led Constellation’s efforts on the demand response front, which include an interesting combination of classic centrally controlled and managed demand management, as well as pushing control to their customers via the company’s VirtuWatt software platform. Constellation also trades energy for itself and on behalf of its clients, which presents the company with a different set of incentives and imperatives when it comes to demand response.
Matt Gillmore, Enterprise Architect, Consumers Energy
As Director of Enterprise Architecture at Consumers Energy, Matt Gillmore’s responsibilities include enterprise information models, application architecture, network architecture for wide area networks, AMI networks, home area networks, and distributed device management. Consumers Energy has put together an unusual plan to link residential smart meters via cellular networks, using SmartSynch as lead contractor and GE, Qualcomm and Grid Net as partners. Gillmore has over 11 years of IT systems development and architecture experience at Consumers Energy, was a key contributor to the OpenHAN system requirements specification and chairs the SG-Network task force within the UCA International Users Group, along with the IP Suite Working Group for the SGIP.
Thierry Godart, President, North American Smart Grid Division, Siemens
As leader of Siemens’ North American smart grid division, Thierry Godart has a bird's-eye view on the German giant’s push to add smart grid IT smarts to its operations might, all to the purpose of creating a business out of smart grid integration. Siemens purchase of eMeter brought it meter data management software, while its partnership with TIBCO is aimed at fine-grained demand response, down to the building management systems that Siemens happens to provide. Godart’s past work as senior vice president at energy industry IT services company Nexant gives him the deep IT expertise Siemens will require to make good on its integration goals.
Jeff Gooding, IT General Manager of Smart Grid Engineering, Southern California Edison
Jeff Gooding is responsible for Southern California Edison’s SmartConnect project, the multi-million smart meter deployment that’s earned accolades around the country. Prior to joining SCE in 2003, Gooding was a senior manager in the Advanced Development & Integration division of CapGemini’s Utilities practice, and previously worked as an architect and technologist on projects at the California ISO, Ontario IMO, Portland General Electric and PG&E, giving him cross-country expertise in utility integration.
James Goodnight, Founder and CEO, SAS
As one of the world’s major enterprise business analytics software vendors, SAS has the kind of expertise that utilities are going to need to bring their new smart grid systems into integration with the rest of their IT operations. James Goodnight, who worked for NASA’s Apollo program before founding SAS in 1976, understands the challenges of managing complex systems. SAS has been expanding its energy forecasting, trading and risk management systems for utilities to back up their latest smart grid deployments. There’s big data to manage out there in the smart grid, and SAS will be managing it.
Erich Gunther, Chairman, CTO and Co-Founder, Enernex
Erich Gunther and the team at Enernex are a mainstay of the smart grid industry, but behind the scenes, in the deep technical details. Whether it’s the latest developments in federal standards or a review of the last few decades of technological development within the utility industry, Enernex consults with some of the world's largest utilities and vendors on how to plan, architect, deploy, test and scale smart grids from end to end. Gunther was part of the original team that developed EPRI’s IntelliGrid Architecture and helped oversee its development through its first major application at Southern California Edison for the utility's AMI and Smart Grid programs.
Mozhi Habibi, Strategy Manager, Emerging Solutions at IBM
Ms. Habibi leads IBM's emerging energy and utility solutions outside the existing solution set by assessing the white space market opportunities. She has more than 15 years of experience in the energy software industry with emphasis in global marketing, go-to-market strategy development, strategic alliances, business development, and product marketing. While IBM has already displayed an unmatched war chest for new analytics companies in the past few years with a wide range of acquisitions, don’t be surprised if Ms. Habibi and company continue to both pluck the best soft grid and data analytics companies, as well leverage the company’s hefty in-house expertise.
Becky Harrison, Smart Grid Director, Progress Energy
Harrison’s role as smart grid director of Progress Energy gives her oversight of the Southeastern utility’s cutting-edge projects, such as its conservation voltage reduction program and its multi-million smart meter rollout, backed by a $200 million Department of Energy stimulus grant. Harrison’s role as a director and finance chair of both the Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative and the GridWise Alliance gives her a view on the latest developments in managing the rollout of smart grid technologies in the eyes of utility customers.
Steve Hauser, VP Grid Integration, NREL
Steve Hauser's job at the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory is to lead national efforts to create a smarter grid. To that end, he’s been setting up new programs and partnerships for causes ranging from renewable power-grid integration to standards consensus-building. He was one of the driving forces behind the creation of the GridWise Alliance, and previously held senior positions at GridPoint, SAIC, and Battelle, as well serving as chairman of The World Renewable Energy Congress.
Chris Hickman, Founder, Innovari
Chris Hickman has been in the utility industry for decades, and brings that experience to bear as he urges utilities to rethink their relationships with their customers and regulators. After his most recent roles at SureGrid and Ice Energy, Hickman’s latest endeavor, Innovari, seeks to bring together innovation and energy to create new business models to bring demand-side technology effectively into the market.
Patricia Hoffman, Assistant Secretary for the Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, DOE
Patricia A. Hoffman was named the Assistant Secretary at the DOE in June 2010, after being the acting Assistant Secretary until then. She has played a key role in managing the $4 billion in smart grid stimulus funds that have been handed out to utilities and private, public and institutional partners, and also works closely with NIST and NERC on other issues such as cybersecurity on the grid.
Doug Houseman, Vice President of Technology and Innovations, Enernex
GTM Research favorite Doug Houseman has a hand in guiding smart grid technology development on multiple fronts, not least as head of technology and innovations at smart grid consultancy Enernex. He’s also a member of the NIST/EPRI smart grid framework architecture team and helped develop the NIST smart grid framework model. He is also a member of IEEE with a lead role in the standard body’s Intelligent Grid Coordinating Committee. You can also always count on him speaking his mind -- and putting to rest any incorrect assumptions you may have about the future of the smart grid.
Craig Ivey, President, Consolidated Edison
As president of Consolidated Edison, Craig Ivey is overseeing a host of smart grid projects seeking to modernize a massive urban grid infrastructure and integrate millions of New York City power customers with their utility -- not exactly an easy task. Before joining ConEd in 2009, Ivey had spent 24 years at Dominion Virginia Power, where he served as senior vice president of electric delivery and senior vice president of transmission and distribution.
Tags: ami, amr, batteries, california, cisco, da, demand response, distribution automation, doe, efficiency, energy efficiency, energy storage, enernoc, finance, ge
