grid edge innovation summit 2019

Dr. Shay Bahramirad serves as a strategic business leader at ComEd, the electric utility serving northern Illinois, including Chicago. She drives the company’s efforts to visualize and implement the 21st century power grid transformation and the new energy economy. She is responsible for ComEd’s vision of the grid of the future and communities of the future, system reliability, engineering and planning. Bahramirad also develops frameworks for emerging technology roadmaps and investment strategies to enable higher levels of resilience, sustainability and equitable economic development. To achieve this, she is driving an effort to reskill ComEd’s existing workforce to prepare for new challenges and possibilities. Bahramirad is an editorial board member of Electricity Journal, a professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology and the IEEE/PES Vice President of New Initiatives and Outreach, overseeing the organization’s engagement with policymakers globally, and developing strategies for next generation of standards and frameworks, including smart cities.

Prior to her current role, Bahramirad was the Director of Distribution System Planning, Smart Grid & Innovation at ComEd, where she acted as technical lead for projects including the Bronzeville Community Microgrid, defined an energy storage roadmap and headed an effort to develop transactive energy models. In addition, she provided technical analysis for policy issues related to electrification, the Future Energy Jobs Act, and the Illinois Commerce Commission’s NextGrid process, while fostering a cross-organizational culture of innovation. Before joining ComEd, Bahramirad served in a number of engineering roles for over a decade. She has published extensively on subjects ranging from smart grids to smart cities and has served as an expert witness at the state and federal levels on issues including distributed energy resources, microgrids and advanced distribution planning.

Bahramirad serves on the Auxiliary Board of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Leader Council of Mercy Home for Boys and Girls, the Board of Directors of HFS Chicago Scholars, the Board of Directors of Chicago Architecture Foundation. and the Executive Board of Director of Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers/ Power and Energy Society. She fundraises for the Chicago Special Olympics, St. Jude Hospital, and the American Heart Association, among others. She is the founder and a member of the board of Power and Energy Society Women in Power.

Dr. Bahramirad holds multiple advanced degrees, including a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology and an M.Sc. in both electric power engineering and computer science from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. She is a graduate of Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern Women’s Senior Leadership program and Finance for Executives.

Jacob Tetlow is vice president of transmission and distribution operations for Arizona Public Service Company (APS). Based in Phoenix, APS is Arizona’s largest electric utility provider serving over 2.7 million residents across the state.  He is responsible for the company’s energy delivery function, which includes system operations, maintenance, engineering, project management and construction of the electrical transmission and distribution system. 

Jacob recently served as the chair of the Association of Edison Illuminating Companies distributed energy resources sub-committee and is a member of the association’s power delivery committee. He also speaks regularly across the U.S. regarding distributed energy describing how the utility sector can enable and complement the rapidly changing energy landscape.  Closer to home Jacob serves on the Board of Trustees for The Nature Conservancy of Arizona and the Arizona State University’s Industrial Advisory Board in search of partnerships between industry and education. 

He grew up in Mesa Arizona and graduated Arizona State University in 1995 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering.  Jacob worked and lived in both Show Low and Flagstaff Arizona for over 15 years while working at multiple power plants in rural Arizona.

Anne Hoskins spearheads Sunrun’s federal and state public policy and regulatory advocacy. She joined Sunrun after serving nearly three years as a commissioner on the Maryland Public Service Commission, where she also served as a member of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) board of directors and as Chair of the NARUC International Relations Committee. Previously, she led federal and state advocacy for Public Service Enterprise Group Incorporated and served as a visiting research scholar at Princeton University’s Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment. Prior to that, Anne represented Verizon Wireless as a senior regulatory counsel and served as a policy advisor to the Governor of New Jersey.

Dr. Julio Romero Agüero is Chief Innovation and Transformation Officer at JEA. He provides leadership in the identification, development, evaluation, and adoption of emerging technologies, business models, services, processes, and industry leading practices to improve overall enterprise performance and sustainability, and achieve digital transformation.He has 23 years of industry experience in the areas of technology and business strategy, grid modernization, smart grid, utility of the future, distribution systems analysis, planning, and operations, and integration of distributed generation, energy storage, microgridsand electric vehicles. He has developed solutions in these areas for electric utilities and regulatory boards in the USA, Canada, Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia. He has published over 40 articles in topics pertaining to these areas and is a frequent speaker in industry events.

Before joining JEA he served as Vice President of Strategy and Business Innovation at Quanta Technology, where he led high performing teams in the development of pioneering methodologies and concepts for planning and analysis of modern and future power distribution systems, grid modernization, and distributed energy resources. He has been Adjunct Professor at University of North Carolina at Charlotte and University of Houston. He is a former Commissioner of the National Energy Commission of Honduras. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE, and has served as Chair of the IEEE Distribution Subcommittee, Chair of the IEEE Working Group on Distributed Resources Integration, Editor of IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery, and Editor of IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid. He is a member of the Advisory Committee of DistribuTECH.

He holds PhD, MBA and BSEE degrees from National University of San Juan (Argentina), North Carolina State University and National Autonomous University of Honduras, respectively.

Curt Kirkeby holds a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering (BSEE) from Montana State University and a Masters in Engineering Management (MSEM) from Washington State University. He is a registered professional engineer in the State of Washington and has extensive experience in the electric and gas utility industry; 6 years in substation design; 18 years in GIS, outage management, asset management, advanced metering systems, engineering modeling; and 14 years in applied research and development focused on energy storage, renewable integration, smart grid, and smart cities. Mr. Kirkeby is currently responsible for innovation strategy and applied research and development, focused on technologies and solutions that enhance the grid and deliver increased value to customers.

Joshua is the President and CEO of Opus One Solutions, a software engineering and solutions company empowering the electricity grid to transform into a platform model for the decentralized energy economy. ​Prior to Opus One, Joshua was the Director of Engineering at eCAMION Inc., a grid-scale energy storage provider. Joshua was also head of smart grid at Toronto Hydro Electric System Limited, where he led the policy, strategy, regulatory, business, and engineering development of Toronto’s smart grid infrastructure, including Toronto’s 25-year smart grid roadmap.​

Dr. Shay Bahramirad serves as a strategic business leader at ComEd, the electric utility serving northern Illinois, including Chicago. She drives the company’s efforts to visualize and implement the 21st century power grid transformation and the new energy economy. She is responsible for ComEd’s vision of the grid of the future and communities of the future, system reliability, engineering and planning. Bahramirad also develops frameworks for emerging technology roadmaps and investment strategies to enable higher levels of resilience, sustainability and equitable economic development. To achieve this, she is driving an effort to reskill ComEd’s existing workforce to prepare for new challenges and possibilities. Bahramirad is an editorial board member of Electricity Journal, a professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology and the IEEE/PES Vice President of New Initiatives and Outreach, overseeing the organization’s engagement with policymakers globally, and developing strategies for next generation of standards and frameworks, including smart cities.

Prior to her current role, Bahramirad was the Director of Distribution System Planning, Smart Grid & Innovation at ComEd, where she acted as technical lead for projects including the Bronzeville Community Microgrid, defined an energy storage roadmap and headed an effort to develop transactive energy models. In addition, she provided technical analysis for policy issues related to electrification, the Future Energy Jobs Act, and the Illinois Commerce Commission’s NextGrid process, while fostering a cross-organizational culture of innovation. Before joining ComEd, Bahramirad served in a number of engineering roles for over a decade. She has published extensively on subjects ranging from smart grids to smart cities and has served as an expert witness at the state and federal levels on issues including distributed energy resources, microgrids and advanced distribution planning.

Bahramirad serves on the Auxiliary Board of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Leader Council of Mercy Home for Boys and Girls, the Board of Directors of HFS Chicago Scholars, the Board of Directors of Chicago Architecture Foundation. and the Executive Board of Director of Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers/ Power and Energy Society. She fundraises for the Chicago Special Olympics, St. Jude Hospital, and the American Heart Association, among others. She is the founder and a member of the board of Power and Energy Society Women in Power.

Dr. Bahramirad holds multiple advanced degrees, including a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology and an M.Sc. in both electric power engineering and computer science from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. She is a graduate of Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern Women’s Senior Leadership program and Finance for Executives.

Kristen Brown is a Principal with Commonwealth Edison’s Utility of the Future group which is tasked with advancing ComEd’s transition into the future. In this role, Kristen is responsible for identifying and evaluating potential investments in new technologies related to the realities of rapid technical advancement, increasing data availability, pervasive connectivity, and customer choice and control. She specifically focuses on ComEd’s peer-to-peer, transactive energy, and communications infrastructure strategies.

Prior to her role at ComEd, Kristen was a Fellow at the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E). She worked with academic institutions, start-up companies, and large businesses to advance energy technologies in materials design, energy efficiency, and virtual reality. Kristen holds a PhD from Northwestern University in Chemistry and a BS from Georgia Tech in Chemical Engineering.

Ashwin Shashindranath is a Managing director at Evergy Ventures. Ashwin is looking for and works with entrepreneurs and companies who are genuinely excited about being agents of change in the energy landscape. Since joining Evergy Ventures in 2017, he's led investments in ecobee, Redaptive, Claroty and ClimaCell. His focus areas include Energy Storage, Digital Utility, Energy Efficiency and Cybersecurity. He previously served on the investment team at OpenAir Equity Partners where his areas of interest included Internet Of Things and Aging in Place technologies. Ashwin has over 10 years of startup operational experience spanning both business development and product management roles.

Mark’s work focuses on several topics related to the changing nature of the electricity grid. Mark has contributed to RMI’s work on new approaches to grid resource planning that better account for the expanding role of renewable energy and distributed energy resources. Mark also helped lead RMI’s analysis of the potential of demand flexibility to reduce grid emissions and costs, and has engaged with several industry partners to launch new business models that take advantage of that potential.

BACKGROUND
Prior to joining RMI, Mark worked at Ascend Analytics, helping deploy software for grid dispatch optimization and financial modeling to several large energy companies. Mark has also held research positions at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory working on improving regional electricity system planning models, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory working on analysis of the potential for aggregated demand response programs to provide ancillary services.