Meeting Theme: “Innovative Approaches for Integrated T&D Modeling and Simulations”
Anderson R. de Queiroz– NC State University
Anderson R. de Queiroz received his B.Sc. in 2005 and M.Sc. in 2007 in electrical engineering from Federal University of Itajubá (UNIFEI) in the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil. He has a Ph.D. in operations research from the University of Texas at Austin (2011). He is an Associate Professor at the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at North Carolina State University (NCSU), where he is a member of the Computing & Systems group and the Operations Research graduate program. Prior to joining NCSU, he worked as a professor at UNIFEI and at North Carolina Central University. He served as consultant and researcher in many sponsored projects (including NSF, CBTS/DHS, NCROEP, MSRDC, ANEEL, PETROBRAS, VALE, CPFL, AES, ENERGISA) in the United States and Brazil. He is interested in the synergy of data and computational innovation to inform strategic decision-making in energy, water, and power systems. He focuses on optimization under uncertainty, data-driven methods and predictive analytics applied to planning, operations, and economics in clean and sustainable energy systems, water-energy nexus, coastal engineering, and biosecurity.
Andrew Clarke – Duke Energy / CAPER IAB Vice-Chair
Drew Clarke works as a Lead Integrated Planning Coordinator in the Integrated System and Operations Planning (ISOP) organization for Duke Energy, based in Charlotte, NC. His primary responsibilities include supporting the development of Duke Energy’s integrated planning processes and coordination between the ISOP and transmission organizations. Prior to joining the ISOP organization, Drew worked as a Technology Development Manager in the Emerging Technology Organization, aligning Duke Energy’s internal R&D priorities and managing external R&D partnerships, and as a System Operations Engineer, providing real time operations support, system operator training simulator support, blackstart restoration studies, and leading Duke Energy’s internal Distributed Energy Resources Operational Working Group. Drew received his PhD and Bachelor of Science, both in Electrical Engineering, from Clemson in 2014 and 2010, respectively. Drew is a Professional Engineer in the state of North Carolina and a NERC certified Reliability Coordinator.
Dr. Badrul Chowdhury – UNC Charlotte / CAPER Center Co-Director
Dr. Badrul Chowdhury is currently serving as Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering with a joint appointment in Systems Engineering & Engineering Management at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA. Dr. Chowdhury’s research interests are in power system modeling, analysis, control and economics; system vulnerability and resiliency assessment; integration of renewable and distributed energy resources in the power grid. He currently serves as the site co-director of CAPER at UNC Charlotte.
Carl Wilkins – Quanta Technology
Carl Wilkins, leads the Distribution business area at Quanta Technology and has served in managerial, research, and consultative roles working with electric and gas utilities. Combining engineering, sales, marketing, and project management expertise with applied technical skills he leads a team that performs grid interconnection studies for distributed generation projects and area planning studies, including load forecasting and resilient grid design. His team also supports hosting capacity, reliability improvement, grid modernization, distribution operations, distributed energy resources (DER) system impacts, data analytics, and electric transportation. Carl holds a BSEE degree from NC State University and is a registered professional engineer in NC and MO.
Eugene “Gene” Moore – Duke Energy
Gene Moore is a Project Director at Duke Energy, based in Charlotte, North Carolina. He received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Ohio State in 2002, M.S. in Nuclear Engineering from Texas A&M in 2006, and M.B.A. from South Carolina in 2012. Gene’s background includes developing, implementing, and securing regulatory approval for several advanced analysis processes and tools ranging from thermal fluid system analysis to power flow analysis. Gene currently spearheads a multimillion-dollar initiative to enhance distribution planning processes and tools, earning recognition with Duke Energy’s 2022 Operational Excellence Award.
Jishnudeep Kar – Hitachi Energy
Jishnu graduated from NC State with his PhD degree in Electrical Engineering in May, 2023, with expertise in mainly data-driven control, wide-area control, machine learning, and physics-based cyber-security. Since graduation, he has been a scientist at Hitachi Energy working on topics related to grid resiliency, machine learning, controls, etc.
Dr. Johan Enslin – Zucker Family Graduate Education Center at Clemson / CAPER Center Co-Director
Dr. Johan H Enslin (M’85; SM’92; F’12) is the Duke Energy Endowed Chaired Professor in Smart Grid at Clemson University in North Charleston SC, USA and Executive Director for the Energy Systems Program at the Zucker Family Graduate Education Center. Enslin has combined a 40-year career with leadership in industry and academia, in the US, Europe and South Africa. He served as a senior executive for private business operations and a professor in electrical engineering. He received the BS, MS and PhD degrees in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the Rand Afrikaans University (RAU), South Africa, in 1981, 1983 and 1988 respectively. He is a registered Professional Engineer in South Africa, Fellow of the SAIEE and Fellow of the IEEE.
Karthikeyan Balasubramaniam – Argonne National Laboratory (ANL)
Karthikeyan Balasubramaniam is a Principal Energy Systems Scientist in the Energy Systems and Infrastructure Analysis Division at Argonne National Laboratory. His research interest is in the area of combined analysis of transmission and distribution systems, particularly in the area of impact of distributed energy resources on bulk power system stability; co-optimization of power grid, natural gas and transportation systems; and graph theoretic applications to power systems. In addition to analysis, he spends most of his time developing scientific software to enable the aforementioned analysis, at scale, that run in desktop environments, at HPC clusters and in the cloud.
Marco Salazar – Siemens
Marco Salazar is a versatile engineer with more than 20 years of combined experience in electrical power systems. A recent focus is to provide support for Siemens Grid Software End Users across the United States and Canada. Prior to joining Siemens in 2021, Mr. Salazar accumulated significant experience in performing studies such as NERC Compliance, transmission planning, generation interconnection, generator model validation, and working with regulatory agencies such as the California Public Utilities Commission. Marco’s core electrical training was gained from serving in the United States Navy as a power plant operator.
Dr. Mesut Baran – NC State University / CAPER Center Co-Director
Mesut E. Baran received his Ph.D. degree from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1988. He is currently a Professor with NC State University, Raleigh. His research interests include distribution and transmission system analysis and control, integration of renewable energy resources, and utility applications of power electronics based devices. Currently, he is a member of the FREEDM Systems Center at NC State focusing on both research and education aspects of renewable electric energy systems and their integration into the electric power distribution systems. He also serves as the NC State site Co-Director for CAPER.
Mohammad Razeghi-Jahromi – ABB
Mohammad Razeghi-Jahromi received his Ph.D. degree from the
University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA in 2016, in Electrical and
Computer Engineering. He joined ABB Corporate Research Center
United States (USCRC) in 2017, where he is currently a principal
research scientist.
Dr. Ning Lu – NC State University
Dr. Ning Lu is a Professor at the ECE Department of North Carolina State University and has over 20 years of experience in electric power engineering. She received bachelor’s degree from Harbin Institute of Technology in 1993 and Ph.D. degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2002. From1993 to1998, she was a power system design engineer with Shenyang Electric Power Bureau. From 2003 to 2012, Dr. Ning Lu was a senior research engineer with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Dr Lu’s research interests include modeling and analysis of power system load behaviors, energy management systems development, renewable integration, microgrid modeling and control, and AMI data analysis. Dr. Lu is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. She has authored or co-authored more than 100 publications, including journal articles, conference proceedings, and technical reports.
Ningchao Gao – NREL
Ningchao Gao is currently a Postdoctoral researcher at National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Her research interests include Power system frequency stability analysis with large-scale renewable energy integration, load predication based on machine learning method, and power system economic analysis.
Dr. Peter Schwarz – UNC Charlotte
Peter M. Schwarz is a Professor of Economics and Associate, Energy Production and
Infrastructure Center (EPIC), University of North Carolina at Charlotte. His research addresses energy and environment issues, most recently on innovative rates for electric vehicles, demand response, compensation paid by electric utilities to households providing solar energy, and China’s carbon emissions. He has received grants from the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and has lectured widely in the U.S. as well as in China, Germany, Israel, and Mexico. He has published a text entitled Energy Economics, and the second edition was published on October 24, 2022.
Rahul Chakraborty – Dominion Energy
Rahul Chakraborty received B.E. from Jadavpur University in 2015, M.S. from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 2018 and Ph.D. from NC State University in 2023. Currently, he is working at Dominion Energy Virginia. His areas of interest include grid integration of renewable energy, power system long-term planning and optimization.
Ramtin Hadidi – Clemson University
Ramtin Hadidi received the Ph.D. degree from the Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NL, Canada, in 2012, in electrical engineering. He is currently an Assistant Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Clemson University. Prior to that, He was a research scientist at the Duke Energy eGRID Center at CURI in Charleston. His current research interests include modeling and simulation of power conversion systems, Power system stability studies, combined heat and power units, microgrid control, building energy management and building to grid studies and co-simulation environments. He is an active member of IEEE and IEEE Power & Energy Society.
Steve Whisenant – Duke Energy / CAPER Chair & Facilitator
Steven G. Whisenant is currently serving as Lead Engineer in the Transmission Department of Duke Energy in Charlotte, NC. He is responsible for developing and managing the capital reliability budget and developing new work processes to ensure compliance with NERC Reliability Standards for the bulk transmission system.
As a Project Manager in a previous role, Mr. Whisenant was responsible for the design and implementation of the transition of responsibility for nuclear switchyards from Nuclear Generation to Power Delivery. Before serving as a project manager, Mr. Whisenant served as manager of Duke Power’s System Power Quality Group. Prior to that assignment, he worked in Customer Operations and Transmission Departments. He served as Electrical Project Manager for the Catawba Nuclear Station from 1981-1987. He first joined Duke Power in 1975 as an electrical engineer in the Design Engineering Department.
Mr. Whisenant received a B. S. degree in Electrical Engineering from NC State University, a M. E. degree in Electric Power from Renesselaer Polytechnic Institute and a MBA degree from Queens University. Mr. Whisenant is a registered professional engineer in North and South Carolina.
Vahraz Zamani – Siemens Industry – PTI
Vahraz Zamani’s 19 years of experience covers a wide range of power system modeling, planning, protection, operation, and electromagnetic transient studies. Vahraz is working with power & energy companies (utilities, developers, investors, and technology owners) to assess and deploy clean, innovative & efficient solutions as well as implementing new technologies within the diverse and multicultural team by considering regulatory requirements and technical standards. He is proficient in modeling, planning, and operation of the power systems. He received his PhD in Electrical Engineering- Power Systems from NC State University, Raleigh, NC. Vahraz is a Senior Member of IEEE.
Dr. Valentina Cecchi – UNC Charlotte / Associate Professor
Dr. Valentina Cecchi is an Associate Professor and the Graduate Program Director in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Her research focuses on electric power system modeling and analysis. She leads the Power Delivery Innovation research group. Originally from Rome, Italy, Valentina attended Drexel University and completed B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering in 2005, 2007, and 2010, respectively.
Victor Paduani – New York Power Authority (NYPA)
Victor Paduani received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from North Carolina State University in 2022. Since then, he has been with the AGILe Lab at New York Power Authority. He has hands-on experience running simulations in numerous offline and real-time platforms as well as hardware-in-the-loop testing. His interests include power system modeling and control, integration of renewable energy resources, and real-time co-simulation of power systems.
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