Managing Complexity: Grid Architecture’s Role in the Future Electric Systems

Aaron has been in Information Technology for 20 years and in the utility industry for the last 15 years. As Director of IT Operations at the Electric Reliability of Council of Texas (ERCOT), Aaron was responsible for the multi-data center IT operations of ERCOT’s real-time grid and market systems, deregulated retail market systems, Enterprise Data Warehouse, systems integration, and market settlement systems. In other roles at ERCOT he led business/technology alignment, IT strategy development, program financial management for the Texas Nodal Market Implementation, IT stakeholder relationship management, and the IT divisional project office.

Prior to ERCOT, Aaron was responsible for managing the relationship between IT and utility business units at Aquila, Inc., working with utility and IT leaders to ensure that IT services were aligned with business objectives and that IT was positioned to support their needs.

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

Ron Cunningham has 47 years career with investor-owned utilities and is an IT Enterprise Architect in the Technology Enterprise Architecture group at American Electric Power (AEP), focusing on: grid modernization architecture; IT/OT interoperability industry standards development and use; use of enterprise architecture frameworks, development and refinement of grid and IT architectural metamodels, system modeling, formal ontologies; and enhancing cybersecurity and grid-related telecommunication technologies and architectures.

Eamonn McCormick is the solution architecture services Lead for Utlicast, a leading energy and utility consulting company. Eamonn’s is primarily focused on digital transformation and grid modernization in the energy and utility industries. Eamonn has worked as an enterprise and solution architect on strategic projects and programs at key US utilities and ISOs for over 20 years.

Dr. Seemita Pal is a Senior Research Engineer and the Team Leader of the Architecture Team in the Distributed Systems Group at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). She is leading multiple research projects funded by the Department of Energy, and her areas of focus include grid architecture, grid cybersecurity, synchrophasor technologies and power systems. Dr. Pal is a member of the PNNL Grid Architecture team, and a member of both SEPA Grid Architecture and Cybersecurity Working Groups. She was recognized with the IEEE Member and Geographic Activities (MGA) Achievement Award in 2019, and profile has been featured in the DOE Women @ Energy : STEM Rising series.