Paul De Martini is a leading expert on the business, policy, and technology dimensions of a more distributed and resilient power system. Over the past decade, he has led the development of advanced grid planning practices, DER utilization for distribution grid services, and tariffs and programs for microgrids. His extensive U.S. DOE publications and consulting work for utilities, system operators, energy tech firms, and regulatory agencies have influenced industry transformation efforts in the U.S., Australia, and Canada. Paul is also the Executive Director of the Pacific Energy Institute.

Paul was previously the Chief Strategy & Technology Officer for Cisco Systems’ global energy business unit and earlier served as Vice President, Advanced Grid Technology, at Southern California Edison. He holds an MBA from the University of Southern California and a BS in Applied Economics from the University of San Francisco. He was a visiting scholar at Caltech from 2012 to 2020 and the 2016 Cazier Practitioner-in-Residence at the RAND Graduate School. Paul is a senior member of IEEE and a California state-certified electric system operator.

Associates

Jeffrey Taft, PhD

Dr Jeffrey Taft was formerly the Chief Architect for Electric Grid Transformation at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and is now a Fellow of the Pacific Energy Institute. He has played a seminal role in the development of Grid Architecture methodologies through the US Department of Energy’s Grid Modernization Laboratory Consortium (GMLC). He was also a co-lead for the US DOE’s Modern Distribution Grid (DSPx) initiative.

Jeff draws on his unique multi-disciplinary industry experience, including electric power systems, software, communications, sensors and signal processing, network theory, and control systems, as well as extensive skills and experience as a system architect. He also formerly held Chief Architect positions related to grid modernization at Cisco Systems, Accenture, and IBM, as well as various engineering positions at Westinghouse Electric Company.

John Caldwell, PhD

Dr. John Caldwell is an Associate Professor, Economics at New Mexico State University. He is the former Director, Business Economics for Edison Electric Institute. John is an expert on the development of long‐term forecast models for energy use and peak demand, alternative rate designs, such as negotiated rate, fixed price, and fixed bill products, and the implementation of financial hedging strategies and risk management systems to support these products. Earlier, he worked at Illinois Power and NiSource. John holds a BS in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Champaign‐Urbana, an MBA from the University of Illinois at Springfield, an MS in mathematics from the University of Iowa, and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Andrew De Martini

Andrew De Martini is a senior research analyst and technical writer with extensive experience producing and editing client project deliverables. He has contributed to the development of the US DOE’s compendium of research on Distributed Resource Utilization and Modern Distribution Grid (DSPx), Caltech’s Grid 2020 report, several Edison Electric Institute papers, as well as other national lab reports. Andrew studied Philosophy and History at Boston University. He completed the Energy Innovation and Emerging Technologies Program at Stanford University and the Regulatory Basics course at New Mexico State University.