Orange ButtonSM Program Update

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.

Tom Tansy serves as Chairman of the SunSpec Alliance where he leads the solar industry’s effort to establish data and communication standards that will enable seamless integration of solar PV into the Smart Grid.

The SunSpec Alliance has over 60 members, including leading providers of solar inverters, environmental monitoring equipment, smart meters, next-generation solar semiconductors, and related software. Tansy was previously General Manager and Vice President of Business Development for the Vision Systems Group of Power-One, Vice President of Business Development of Zero Motorcycles, and founded several software companies including one (NetCarta Corporation) that was acquired by Microsoft.

Debbie Brodt-Giles is the Data Science and Innovation Group Manager within the Strategic Energy Analysis Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. For more than 20 years, Debbie has been leading web-based platform development projects with the goal of making open data accessible and reusable for the benefit of the energy community. Her team develops data management systems, web applications, data visualizations, and cloud computing solutions that help analysts and researchers perform computations, simulations, and modeling. Debbie has been actively engaged with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Program and has led projects that develop useful solar data and tools; has led Catalyst, a prize-challenge program that accelerates market solutions and entrepreneur success; and is developing the Orange Button Data Exchange Platform to help industry exchange standardized solar data. Debbie holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration and Marketing from California State University, Northridge.