Emerging Energy Marketplaces: Transactive Energy Systems

Mr. Knight joined PNNL in 2016 and is a Chief Engineer in the Integration Team of the Energy and Environment Directorate, Electric Infrastructure Group. Mr. Knight is an experienced professional with deep experience of utility companies. His experience includes distribution, transmission, metering, systems integration, deregulation, smart grid, interoperability, asset management, risk management, and transactive energy systems. He is also Emeritus Chair of the GridWise Architecture Council (GWAC), a group formed by the U.S. Department of Energy to promote and enable interoperability among the many entities that interact with the nation’s electric power system.

Mr. Knight is responsible for providing thought leadership and project/program management for the Laboratory’s research portfolios in interoperability and transactive systems. These roles include collaborating with other national laboratories as part of the GMLC to improve interoperability and adoption of transactive energy systems. Mr. Knight also provides technical direction, connecting research to industry needs though interaction and participation in industry groups.

Kay Aikin is the CEO of Introspective Systems, a software company based in Portland Maine. She is a graduate of Pennsylvania State University and holds a degree in energy/sustainability engineering. She has spent her career as an energy engineer, architectural designer, and business development executive, currently the CEO of an AI-based complex systems software company.
She has spent several years working with partner, Dr. Caryl Johnson studying the application of AI/complex systems to the integration of Distributed Energy Resources into the electrical grid as an expansion of her experience in sustainable technologies. She is a recognized Transactive Energy expert and is a regular speaker at conferences on this topic as well as distributed intelligence on the edge. She is a member of IEEE power and Energy Society, Smart Electric Power Alliance, Seismological Society of America. She is an active participant in the Transactive Energy Working Group, Building to Grid Working group for the Smart Electrical Power Alliance, Grid Wise Architecture Council and the International Transactive Energy Working Group.

Dr. Ron Melton is the Team Lead for Electricity Infrastructure Systems, a Senior Power Systems Researcher and Project Manager in the Electricity Infrastructure Group at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). He is the Principal Investigator for the DOE Advanced Grid Research project for an ADMS Open Source Platform, a member of the core team for the DOE Grid Architecture project, and Administrator of the GridWise® Architecture Council. He was the Project Director of the Pacific Northwest Smart Grid Demonstration that concluded in June 2015. He has 10 years of experience in cyber security for critical infrastructure systems and over 30 years of experience applying computer technology to a variety of engineering and scientific problems. Dr. Melton is a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and a Senior Member of the Association for Computing Machinery. He chairs the IEEE Power and Energy Society Smart Buildings, Loads, and Customer Systems Technical Committee and the Smart Electric Power Alliance Grid Architecture Working Group. Dr. Melton received his BSEE from University of Washington and his MS and PhD in Engineering Science from the California Institute of Technology