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EIA Conference 2009
Session 4: Electric Power Infrastructure: Status and Challenges for the Future

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Moderator: Scott Sitzer (EIA)
Speakers P. Kumar Agarwal (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission)
Timothy J. Brennan
(University of Maryland)
Mark G. Lauby
(North American Electric Reliability Corporation)
  Note: Concurrent sessions used a variety of presentation and round table discussion formats. All available presentations have been posted.
  Moderator and Speaker Bios and Presentations
Scott Sitzer, Director of the Office of Coal, Nuclear, Electric and Alternate Fuels Scott Sitzer is Director of the Office of Coal, Nuclear, Electric and Alternate Fuels of the Energy Information Administration (EIA). He has been with EIA and its predecessor agency, the Federal Energy Administration, since 1976, and has experience in analyzing all of the major components of energy supply and demand. He is currently responsible for the design, implementation, and maintenance of data collection systems for electricity, coal, renewable fuels, and alternate transportation fuels, and for their associated analysis and dissemination. He received his B.A. in economics from the University of New Mexico, and his M.A. in economics from George Washington University.
P. Kumar Agarwal, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

Transmission Incentives PDF Icon pdf Powerpoint Icon ppt

P. Kumar Agarwal has been with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission since 1994 and is presently serving as an acting director for the division of Reliability and Engineering Services within the Office of Electric Reliability. He was with Florida Power and Light Company from 1987 to 1994. He was a member of the adjunct faculty at Florida International University from 1990-93. He was one of the authors of the Commission’s foundational reliability orders - Order No. 672 and the ERO certification order. He testified in litigated cases as an expert witness on issues related to transmission service while he was part of the Commission’s litigation staff during 1994-97. He is a registered Professional Engineer in the State of Maryland. He received his B. S. in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India in 1983 and his M. S. in Electrical Engineering from Florida International University.

Timothy J. Brennan, University of Maryland

Supporting the Infrastructure: Has Deregulation Helped or Hurt? PDF Icon pdf Powerpoint Icon ppt

Timothy J. Brennan is a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) and a senior fellow with Resources for the Future (RFF) in Washington, DC. During 1996-97, he was the senior economist for industrial organization and regulatory policy on the staff of the Council of Economic Advisers. From 2003 through 2005, he served as a staff consultant to the Bureau of Economics of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. During 2006, he held the T. D. MacDonald Chair in Industrial Economics at the Canadian Competition Bureau. His electricity research has examined the California 2000-01 crisis, capacity markets, reluctance to switch suppliers, energy efficiency and “decoupling,” real-time metering, market power measurement, transmission adequacy, convergence mergers, state/federal relations, stranded costs, and difficulties in implementing competition. He has written two books with others from Resources for the Future on competition and deregulation in the electricity sector, A Shock to the System in 1996 and Alternating Currents: Electricity Markets and Public Policy, published in 2002. He received his B.A. in mathematics from the University of Maryland in College Park and his M.A. in mathematics and Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

Mark G. Lauby, North American Electric Reliability Corporation

Electric Power Infrastructure: Status and Challenges for the Future PDF Icon pdf Powerpoint Icon ppt

Mark G. Lauby joined the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) in January 2007 as the Manager of Reliability Assessments. He leads the electric reliability organization’s efforts to independently assess and report on the overall reliability, adequacy, and associated risks of the interconnected North American bulk power system. Prior to joining NERC, he worked since 1987 for the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) where he held a number of senior positions, including: Director, Power Delivery & Markets; Managing Director, Asia, EPRI International; and Manager, Power System Engineering in the Power System Planning and Operations Program. He started his career in the electric industry at the Mid-Continent Area Power Pool (MAPP), in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1979. His responsibilities included transmission planning, power system reliability assessment, and probabilistic evaluation. He is a Senior Member and previously chaired the International Electricity Research Exchange (IERE) and several working group. He has been recognized for his technical achievements in many technical associations, including the 1992 IEEE Walter Fee Young Engineer of the Year Award. He is the author of over 100 papers on the subjects of power system reliability, expert systems, transmission system planning, and power system numerical analysis techniques. He received both his B.A. in Electrical Engineering in 1980 and his M.S. in Electrical Engineering in 1989 from the University of Minnesota.