Crowd-sourcing: Understanding Community Choice Aggregation

Rachel Henderson joined SEPA in 2016 as Manager of Executive Affairs. In this role, she supports the SEPA Board of Directors and Utility Executive Exchange Forum, an executive-level group that provides opportunities for utilities to engage with their peers on the topics of distributed energy resources and the evolving utility business model.

Prior to joining SEPA, she worked for CSRA supporting the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission as Lead of the Program Management Office for a large IT contract. She has experience conducting public health research and implementing community-based projects in Appalachia and Cape Town, South Africa.

Rachel served as a Spring 2017 Fellow in the Clean Energy Leadership Institute (CELI) in Washington D.C., a leadership development organization dedicated to building a diverse community of professionals to advance innovative clean energy solutions.

Rachel has a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and Global Development with a concentration in Public Health from the University of Virginia.

Since 2010 Matthew Marshall has served as the Executive Director of the Redwood Coast Energy Authority, a joint powers agency of Humboldt County local governments. In this role he leads RCEA’s community choice aggregation program (launched in May 2017) as well as efforts related to energy efficiency, electric vehicle charging infrastructure, renewable energy project development, and regional energy planning.

Ms. Yung leads SMUD’s Community Energy Services Project Management Office and is responsible the technical operations team in charge of initial client implementations and ongoing operations of CCE Data Management and Call Center services. Michelle joined SMUD in 2011 as part of the DOE Smart Grid Investment Grant team. Prior to her Community Energy Services role, she worked in both the Customer Services and Research and Development departments, and led numerous high impact projects at SMUD. Examples include My Energy Tools, SMUD’s suite of online energy analysis tools for customers; and EPA’s Portfolio Management application, which is the integration of SMUD’s commercial customer electrical usage data for building energy efficiency benchmarking. Ms. Yung holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of California, Davis, and an MBA, Finance and International Business, from Santa Clara University.

With more than 20 years of experience in the energy commodity supply and energy efficiency markets, Mark assists organizations with energy planning, project evaluation, procurement processes and contract negotiations. His current work focuses on advising communities on municipal aggregation and organizations on energy procurement issues. His experience through the electricity deregulation process in Illinois provides him with a long-range perspective on positioning, risk management and opportunity development.

Prior to founding The Power Bureau, Mark served as the first Director of the Illinois Power Agency where he secured electricity supply on behalf of approximately 4.7 million residential and small commercial ratepayer accounts serviced by Commonwealth Edison and Ameren Illinois. During his tenure, the Agency not only established the hedging and procurement processes to secure energy, capacity and transmission for ratepayers; but also reviewed and negotiated agreements around a series of alternative generation projects ranging from renewable (such as wind and solar), to energy efficiency and demand response assets, to clean coal projects including FutureGen, Tensaska, Chicago Clean Energy, and Power Holdings.

Mark created one of the largest utility aggregations (natural gas and electricity) for the State of Illinois during his time at the University of Illinois where he managed purchasing on behalf of 27 state agencies and 12 municipalities. Prior to his University work, he developed energy efficiency and power generation projects for federal clients on behalf of Nicor.

Mark maintains research positions at both the Illinois Institute of Technology and Argonne National Lab, and serves as an instructor at the University of Illinois at Chicago Masters of Energy Engineering program.

Jim Parks has worked with customer-facing utility programs for over 28 years. He has worked with customers and programs in the areas of energy efficiency, low income, demand response, smart grid and grid modernization and has held progressively more responsible positions throughout his career. He has successfully managed project/program budgets ranging from $5 million to $308 million. He has overseen the development of dozens of customer-focused utility programs and has broad experience testifying before regulators, legislators and customer groups.