Power Delivery

Areas of Focus: Safety, Operational Efficiency, Distribution

The Cost Optimization Subcommittee collaborates, shares, and benchmarks cost-saving initiatives that are being considered by member companies with the goal of reducing cost in operations, maintenance, and capital, while maintaining safety, reliability, and meeting customer expectations.

The Subcommittee holds quarterly virtual meetings. Recently, the Subcommittee has completed several data modeling and analytics projects that improve decision-making and operational efficiency.

Members are generally senior leaders, supervisors, managers, directors, and vice presidents.

Leadership

Areas of Focus: Distributed Energy Resource (DER), Energy Storage Systems, ADMS, Grid Modernization, Impacts to Operations and Planning.

The Distributed Energy Resources (DER) Subcommittee discusses technical and operational challenges, best practices, and solutions related to integrating DER of all sizes, ranging from small residential, commercial/industrial, modest-sized community installations, and utility-scale resources.

The Subcommittee holds an in-person meeting twice per year, holds monthly webinar sessions, and supports the production of the Grid Mod Podcast. In the podcast, the Subcommittee is interviewed to discuss current trends around All Things DER creating a modern, sustainable grid.

Members are typically vice presidents, managers, directors, general managers, and group leaders

Leadership

Francis Frank, Co-Chair
Director, Grid Modernization
Pennsylvania Power & Light

Jasdeep Singh, Co-Chair
Director, Grid Modernization
Arizona Public Service

Mark Esguerra, Past Chair
Director, Distribution System Planning and Strategy
Southern California Edison

Elizabeth Cook, Past Chair
VP of Technical Strategy
AEIC

Areas of Focus: Technical and operational challenges, best practice sharing and learning, and distribution management solutions

The Distribution Systems Operation (DSO) Subcommittee is focused on technical and operational challenges, best practices, and solutions to address contemporary challenges and future opportunities relating to the operations of modern distribution equipment, their control and management systems, and supporting OT and IT infrastructure.

The Subcommittee will hold in-person meetings semi-annually, rotating the host among participating utilities with additional virtual meetings as needed. Specific activities of the committee include:

• Identifying a common definition of priority topics and challenges to facilitate investigations and discussions.
• Identifying both the operational and technical impacts, best practices, architecture, processes, and solutions associated with each priority topic.
• Documenting, evaluating, and comparing conceptual approaches to address challenges and implementation objectives.

Members of this Subcommittee include senior leaders and managers of distribution systems at electric utilities.

Areas of Focus: HR Best Practices, Compliance, Workforce Planning, and Compensation/Benefits

The Human Resources Subcommittee assists AEIC member companies with expanding the human resources functions of their respective organizations. The Subcommittee focuses on human resource issues of power delivery organizations, including trends, legal updates, benchmarking, and best practices.

The Subcommittee is preparing a quarterly virtual meeting schedule and is exploring the possibility of an annual in-person meeting. They’ve recently shared information and best practices across member companies on several topics, including labor negotiation, callouts, hybrid work, and storm pay.

Members are typically vice presidents, directors, managers, and labor consultants

Leadership

• Tammy Mason, Chair – Associated Electric Coop, Inc.
• Molly Peters, Past Chair – Public Strategies
• Rita Zindars, Past Chair – Ameren

Areas of Focus: Storage, Transmission, Safety, Distribution & Renewables

The Project Management Subcommittee provides a forum for electric utility-focused professionals to collaborate on best practices related to the project management discipline. The subcommittee openly shares successes and challenges related to the use of project management tools, organizational challenges, training, estimating, team dynamics, and management support in the utility industry.

The Subcommittee holds two in-person meeting each year. Members openly share successes and challenges related to the use of project management tools, organizational challenges, training, estimating, team dynamics, and management support in the utility industry.

Members are typically managing directors, directors, senior project managers, executive directors, and project administrators

Leadership

Erik Kopier, Chairperson
Project Controls Manager
Xcel Energy

W. Blake Chalson, Vice Chair
Senior Manager, Project Management
Southern California Edison

Teresa-Thao Tran, Treasurer
Manager, Capital Projects
DTE Energy

Alicia Demarco, Secretary
Project Manager
Con Edison

Kelly Blindauer, Member Outreach
Supervisor of Operations Budget & Analytics
Minnesota Power

Kathy Hidalgo, Past Chairperson
Director, Inspections
Southern California Edison Co.

Areas of Focus: Operational excellence in occupational health and safety, peer-to-peer collaboration, risk assessment and elimination, engineering controls, thought leadership

The AEIC Safety Benchmarking Subcommittee is an operational benchmarking forum for members across electric sector organizations to share best practices and gather insights on work methods, procedures, training, tools and technology, and culture-based activities that aim to mitigate and reduce occupational health and safety (OHS) risks.

The Subcommittee meets monthly—with at least two meetings a year held in person. Members identify benchmarking topics and facilitate review and discussion of the learnings in monthly meetings. Upon request, the Subcommittee will also coordinate in-depth peer reviews of member safety programs by independent teams comprising safety professionals from other member organizations and develop a forum for timely sharing of actual significant safety incident information including causal analysis and corrective actions.

The Subcommittee will maintain a central repository for benchmarking efforts, educational material, use cases, best practices, and other reference materials and provide a progress report and upcoming strategic initiatives at the AEIC Annual Meeting.

Members of this Subcommittee include executives (e.g., Director level) from operations functions within AEIC member companies. In addition, the Subcommittee will invite and include safety experts, utility subject matter experts, and experts from other industries or vendors as deemed necessary to enhance learning and information-sharing among members.

Leadership

Paul Grigaux, Chairperson
Vice President – T&D, Distribution
Southern California Edison

Culture Subgroup Vice-Chairs

Asset Management Subgroup Vice-Chairs

Work Methods Subgroup Vice-Chairs

Lee Rozier
Safety Director
Dominion Energy

Ken Bogler
VP, Safety
Eversource

Training Subgroup Vice-Chairs

Barry Tegg
Minnesota Power

Rick Nicosia
Director, Process Improvement & Customer Affordability
Arizona Public Service

Areas of Focus: Storage, Transmission, and Safety

The Storm Team Subcommittee provides a forum for power delivery professionals to exchange ideas and information on previous severe storm restoration events.

The Subcommittee holds one in-person meeting each year. Members develop a series of best practices and tools in the areas of storm restoration and system hardening, including storm best practices, pre-storm checklists, storm restoration best practices, and storm center practices.

Members are typically senior vice presidents, vice presidents, directors, managers, superintendents, managing supervisors, and senior emergency planners

Leadership