Speakers

Steve Pullins has more than 40 years of utility industry experience in operations, maintenance, engineering, microgrids, and renewables project development. He has designed more than 60 Microgrids for various customers and utilities. He previously led the nation’s Modern Grid Strategy for DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory. He has worked with more than 20 utilities in Smart Grid strategies, renewables strategies, power system optimization with Smart Grid technologies, and microgrids. He has advised several international utility and government organizations on Smart Grid technologies and operations, microgrid development, integrating intelligence, new power generation, and waste to energy issues.

Specialties: Energy thought leader, expert in smart grid strategies, expert in microgrids, expert in biomass to power

Jaclyn Whiteman is Director of CD Project Management at Duke Energy, where she leads a team deploying solar and energy storage sites on the distribution grid. Prior to that she was senior project manager at Duke for nine years, responsible for multiple projects focusing on energy storage, solar, grid modernization, and demand response. Jaclyn deployed the first regulated battery site for Duke and also managed projects for the 3 first islanding projects in the company. Before working at Duke she managed major subcontracts for the NASA Space Shuttle Program for three years. Jaclyn holds an MBA from the University of Florida - Warrington College of Business, and a BSBA in business from the University of Pittsburgh.

I am currently working as an electrical engineer with Duke Energy in the Grid Solutions division. My current role is to design, execute, and test/commission energy storage and microgrid systems.

• 4+ years of experience in ADMS, OMS, GIS network modeling, Distribution Automation and System Studies.
• 2+ years of experience in industrial PMS, Load shedding and AGC systems.
• 8+ years of experience in Substation Automation & Protection engineering.
• 1+ years of experience in Substation design engineering.
• 1+ years of experience in SCADA and HMI engineering.
• Wide knowledge in Substation Automation, Architecture design and Protection systems.
• Wide knowledge on DNP3.0, Modbus, IEC 61850 MMS,GOOSE and SV, IEC 101/104, MultiSpeak, ICCP communication protocols and CIM15 standard.
• Lead ADMS, OMS, SCADA technical teams for designing and implementing projects and 6+ years Project Management.

Erin Redding is a program manager at BoxPower, where she leads the company's Design Studies Program through scaling the development of early-stage microgrid design & engineering, cost estimation and feasibility assessments. Prior to BoxPower she was a Fellow in Sustainable Energy & Puerto Rico at the Environmental Defense Fund, where she was awarded the High Meadows Fellowship from Princeton University to collaborate with the EDF + Business and Energy team for two years on accelerating clean, resilient and equitable microgrid solutions throughout Puerto Rico. Erin holds a bachelor's degree from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.

Alok Singhania is a passionate advocate for sustainability, technology, and people. With a robust background in technology and business, Alok excels at driving positive change by finding innovative solutions to modern organizational challenges. His strategic thinking and creative approach, coupled with expertise in renewable energy, deep learning, blockchain, IoT, and SaaS, have been instrumental in scaling Gridscape to consistent growth. As a visionary entrepreneur and technology leader with over 20 years of experience, Alok has built multiple award-winning ventures, demonstrating excellence in strategic planning and team building. His unwavering commitment to making a positive global impact motivates him to collaborate with and inspire other entrepreneurs to advance sustainable energy solutions.

Alden Phinney is a Regional Director at GridBeyond with 10 years of experience in business development and financial data analysis for the energy transition. He has worked at multiple demand response companies covering residential aggregations to the largest C&I facilities. In his current role at GridBeyond, he partners with businesses and asset owners to generate energy revenues and savings across North American markets. A native San Diegan, he has a degree in Business Management Economics and Sustainability from the University of California Santa Cruz and resides in New York City.

Craig Lewis founded the Clean Coalition in 2009 and has over 30 years of experience in policy and technology innovation, including the proliferation of Solar Microgrids and Community Microgrids. Prior to founding the Clean Coalition, Craig held numerous positions in the wireless, semiconductor, banking, and renewable energy industries. Previously VP of Government Relations at GreenVolts, he was the first to successfully navigate a solar project through California’s Renewable Portfolio Standard solicitation process. Craig was energy policy lead on Steve Westly’s 2006 California gubernatorial campaign. His resume includes senior government relations, corporate development, and marketing positions at leading wireless, semiconductor, and banking companies such as Qualcomm, Ericsson, and Barclays Bank. Craig received an MBA and MSEE from the University of Southern California and a BSEE from the University of California, Berkeley.

Allie Detrio is the Chief Strategist for Reimagine Power, where she specializes in helping clients navigate continuously evolving energy policies and regulations so they can focus on innovating the way to a more sustainable clean energy future. She has over 15 years of experience working in clean energy and sustainability holding a variety of positions in policy, operations, business development, and research.

Detrio is known for her fierce advocacy work in the industry. In 2018, she was awarded the California Solar & Storage Association's Annual Award for her leadership in passing legislation to commercialize the microgrid market in California (SB 1339) and legislation extending the state’s energy storage incentive program authorizing $800M in new funding (SB 700). Recently, Allie was a key player in securing microgrid eligibility and funding ($700M) for California’s new reliability incentive programs (AB 205).

Outside of RP, Allie serves as the Senior Advisor for the Microgrid Resources Coalition (MRC), where she manages all microgrid industry advocacy efforts in the west, including serving as an expert witness and providing testimony in multiple state legislatures and commissions, and is a registered lobbyist for the MRC in California. Prior to founding Reimagine Power, Allie was the Manager of Policy & Strategy at ENGIE, a global microgrid developer, the largest IPP and provider of energy services in the world, and where Allie cut her teeth on microgrid policy.

Allie was one of the first in the world to receive an accredited B.S. in Sustainability from the Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University. She was a cohort of the Decision Center for a Desert City and has minors in Economics, History and Philosophy.

Eric Steinhofer serves as the Director of Distributed Generation Partnerships at CPower. In his role, Eric is responsible for managing existing partners and developing strategic relationships with new partners. Eric is an essential asset in supporting CPower’s partners to monetize distributed generation assets, earn savings, generate revenue, decarbonize the grid and improve grid reliability. Prior to joining CPower, Eric held various positions at clean energy companies including Schneider Electric Energy & Sustainability Services, Leap, and Clean Energy Collective.

Dr. John Abraham is an engineering professor at the University of St. Thomas, as well as an associate research fellow at the University of Minnesota. He holds a PhD in mechanical engineering and a BS, MD, and PhD in heat transfer and fluid mechanics.

I have published four books, three of which address environmental issues. My articles have recently appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Denver Post, Austin Statesman, and San Jose Mercury News. Recent articles on wind power and solar energy have appeared in several international renewable energy magazines. I also wrote the article on the Top 100 Corporate Citizens for Business Ethics magazine.

Specialties: Research, write and edit a variety of products, including books, brochures, articles and website content. I published under my own by-line, but also quite a bit of ghost-writing and print media palcement work. I also host my own radio show on KWMR, and am seeking new opportunities in that public media format.

Topics: I am a global expert on microgrids, virtual power plants, DERMS, nanogrids and other emerging platforms designed to maximize value from distributed energy resources. I have presented on these topics in the U.S. as well as South Korea, Australia, Canada, Mexico, Germany, the U.K., Spain and other countries.

Maya Deshpande is a recent graduate from UCLA’s Master of Engineering in Data Science. She now manages technical projects at Mattel, leveraging her expertise in data science to support the company’s Global Sustainability Team in its mission to optimize supply chain efficiency and reduce resource waste. Prior to joining Mattel, she worked as a data scientist for the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco, where she utilized AI technologies to enhance urban infrastructure and make cities smarter.

Reza Sheikhani is a Project Engineer at TransGrid Energy, holding a Master of Engineering in Green Energy Systems from UCLA and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from CSULB. Previously, he contributed his expertise as a Project Engineer at Palmetto Solar and as an Energy System Design Engineer at Tesla. With over three years of extensive experience in residential solar and Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) across the U.S., Reza is dedicated and passionate about microgrid design and modeling. He is currently expanding his skill set by working on utility-scale standalone BESS and PV+BESS projects. Reza is deeply committed to tackling climate change.

Kumar Saunack has extensive experience in developing and deploying cloud-native NLP projects, utilizing LLMs and large-scale crawling systems for financial data. Prior to their involvement with UCLA Housing, Kumar worked at MSCI Inc. for more than two years, where he contributed to pilot NLP and cloud projects for the firm, using and deploying language models for automated financial data extraction. This involved provisioning and setting up the cloud infrastructure along with deployment pipelines. Kumar was additionally a part of research with Stanford University and Imperial College, London.

Kumar has also worked as a product manager at Nintee, a Sequoia-backed startup, where he designed on-the-fly generative course delivery via prompt engineering using ChatGPT, developed user flow and course progression for courses and worked with software development team for implementation.

Kumar holds a Master of Engineering - Artificial Intelligence from UCLA.

JP Ross is an experienced executive with a demonstrated history of working in the oil & energy industry, specifically solar and renewable energy. Skilled in building teams, P&L management, market expansion, product and business development and developing channels. Professional with a BA/BS focused in Environmental Studies/Chemistry from UC Santa Cruz and graduate degree from UC Berkeley.

Paul DeCotis is a business and technology consultant with over 35 years in the energy field. He specializes in complex business and project management, grid modernization, OT and IT convergence, and business transformation. His education, and teachings in economic and financial analysis, energy and industry modeling, strategy, planning and policy, speak well to his diversity of thought and people, process, and technology consulting. End-to-end project planning to performance outcome management and evaluation., Mr. DeCotis delivers value to his endeavors. He leads West Monroe's executive advisory and regulatory offerings and leads complex multifaceted projects. Mr. DeCotis has been a graduate and undergraduate adjunct faculty member at several colleges and universities for over 26 years in the fields of business strategy, finance, policy, ethics, management studies, and communications.

Prior to his position as energy secretary in New York, Mr. DeCotis worked as a management consultant for 15 years, specializing in executive and professional development; Board and management training; coaching; and mediation. Mr. DeCotis has and continues to serve on national, professional, and community Board’s and committee’s and has extensive experience in local community affairs, including having held elected office. Mr. DeCotis is a member of Montclair Publishing LLC. “Who’s Who in North America” and was named one of City & State’s "Responsible 100 Honorees", recognizing influencers in New York who are setting new standards of excellence, dedication, and leadership in improving their communities and making transformative change by promoting one of the core principles of social responsibility: charity, community engagement, customer service, diversity and inclusion, equity, ethics, transparency, sustainability, and volunteerism.

Adjunct Faculty: Rochester Institute of Technology; Cornell University; Sage Graduate School; and Empire State College.

Adrienne Pierce is the Chief Executive Officer for New Sun Road. Passionate about sustainability, she was previously the head of product management at IronRidge and at SunEdison, Adrienne managed the REDI project to develop a platform that remotely monitored 1800 renewable energy sites globally. She currently serves on the Board of Green Empowerment and is an active member of Women in Cleantech and Sustainability. Adrienne taught chemistry and physics as a Peace Corps volunteer in Gabon, Africa. She holds an M.B.A from Thunderbird and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Lafayette College.

Soam Goel is a seasoned energy industry executive with leadership roles in principal investing, utility scale green infrastructure project development and financing, mergers and acquisitions, and in launching new businesses. Soam has a strong track record of establishing credibility to build influential relationships and partnerships with key stakeholders to achieve ambitious business goals.

As a Senior Partner with Anbaric, an Ontario Teachers’ Pension Fund (OTPP) platform company, Soam led investments and project development in utility scale battery storage and supported offshore wind transmission projects.

Soam has been the Chief Commercial Officer of Power Network New Mexico, a wholly owned subsidiary of Goldman Sachs Global Infrastructure Fund (GSIP). He originated a $400M transmission project for GSIP, now operating as “Western Spirit”. At Power Network he was responsible for the overall economics/ profitability, regulatory filings, customers and markets, and the commercial success of the project.

A frequent speaker and panelist at energy industry conferences, Soam founded Enersights in 2004 to provide strategic advice to senior executives of utility companies and financial participants.

Soam spent ten years with PA Consulting and its predecessor firms where he co-headed the energy M&A practice. Under his leadership, the firm advised clients (utilities, industry vendors, investment banks, and private equity) in transactions ranging in size from $40M to $8B.

Soam started his career working for the Unilever Group of Companies, selected under their fast-track management development program.

Soam received B.Tech. in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology and MBA from the University of Texas at Austin.

In his role as Product Manager, Joe Silver focuses on the development of NineDot’s EV charging strategy, which includes scaling up their vehicle-to-grid business and deploying charging at existing and future sites.

Ryan Z. Davis has served as a Power and Water Systems Engineer and Project Manager at Idaho National Laboratory for over a decade, where he has been instrumental in advancing renewable energy initiatives. His extensive expertise encompasses the integration of renewable energy systems, including photovoltaic, geothermal, wind, HVAC, and microgrid control systems.

Specializing in the planning and design of microgrid systems for Department of Defense (DOD) installations worldwide, Ryan excels in load analysis, mission planning, system design, and renewable energy integration. His work is driven by a commitment to enhancing the resilience and efficiency of energy infrastructures, and ensuring robust and sustainable power solutions for critical missions.

Majid Poshtan, PhD is an expert in electric power transmission planning, power system analysis and control, short circuits studies and protection, condition monitoring of generators, induction motors, transformers, and power cables, substation design, power system computer simulators, and Real-Time simulators.

Phil Ziegler is an industry-recognized subject matter expert in wireless data network technology solution engineering. His tenures with ITT, Bell Labs, Telcordia, and Verizon Wireless consistently facilitated the launch of various state of the art military, satellite, and commercial networks. In 2011, Phil Ziegler Consulting was founded to provide subject matter expertise to venues deploying cellular, public safety, or private network services and was issued two patents for E-911 location determination. In 2018 he was retained by the National Renewable Energy Labs for an extended period as a Principal Consultant for wireless communication initiatives. In 2020, Redevi, Inc was co-founded by Phil to offer services beyond consulting, becoming a turn-key solution provider for vertical markets and enterprises seeking to deploy advanced and sophisticated wireless network services at their Hospital, University, Laboratory, Utility or Industrial Plant.

Stacy Fuhrer leads SDG&E's Advanced Clean Technology regulatory footprint in key proceedings (GRC, Microgrids OIR, RA, IRP, WMP) from a strategy and policy perspective. Further advancing SDG&E's and the State's clean transition to carbon neutrality.

Deji Sonoiki is the Director of Utilities at Momentum. He has over 20 years of professional experience and specialized knowledge in the power and utilities, industrial, and mobility sectors. Deji focuses on aligning agency strategic plans, legislation, and funding opportunities with client needs, leading high-profile projects, and leveraging industry connections to build partnerships and enhance client relationships. He provides strategic guidance to utility clients on aligning funding opportunities with internal investment or capital planning to mitigate rate increase pressure on customers thereby promoting affordability objectives.

Deji was the Manager of Transformation Design and Execution at Ernst and Young, where he helped power and utility companies achieve their strategic objectives across the nation by designing and executing transformation roadmaps. He also held significant positions at PG&E's transmission, distribution, asset management, finance operations, and Siemens in the United Kingdom and the United States.

Deji's first major change was a significant transition from Nigeria to London, where he pursued a master's in financial management. He started his career in finance in the United Kingdom before moving to the United States, where his passion for continuous improvement shifted his focus gradually toward data-driven transformation. Deji is currently pursuing a Doctorate in Business Administration at Northwood University. His certifications include PMP, SAFe Agilist, Certificate in Asset Management, and a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt and Certified Chartered Accountant (ACCA) designation.

Dan Witmer helps customers design, deploy, operate and maintain their 4G/5G private wireless networks. Redevi Inc., formerly Integra Network Solutions, offers an ongoing Managed Service to end users to operate and maintain their private networks. Redevi provides services to the end customer to enable their ownership or use of private networks. As a prime system integrator, Redevi does everything from consulting to system development, test to deployment, maintenance and support. Dan has done business in 19 countries for over 25 years. He has been based in Japan for 5 years, and owned P&L for business units in 10 countries.