RF Board of Directors holds Q1/Q2 meeting in Cleveland

The ReliabilityFirst Board of Directors had an active start to the year, including an early election to welcome Craig Grooms, Chief Operating Officer at Buckeye Power and Ohio Electric Cooperatives, to represent the Small Load Serving Entity Sector as our newest director. The board also approved budget assumptions so that RF could prepare the 2025 Draft Business Plan and Budget, which is currently posted for public comment through June 1. The board has been working to replace our at-large and independent director openings and looks forward to presenting outstanding candidates for our members to vote on in July.

We held the first full board meeting of the year on May 2 at our offices in Cleveland. Elizabeth Cook, vice president of technical strategy at the Association of Edison Illuminating Companies and a consultant in grid modernization, provided an engaging keynote. Her work is focused on solutions for the dynamic energy transformation we are in the midst of. She shared her vision for building a roadmap with energy resources to support grid modernization. Cook highlighted technology, IT systems, and communication network needs to meet the growing electrification demand. She also emphasized understanding the power of data and how AI can fill in gaps and drive efficiency. Cook believes in the potential for utilities to give individuals the tools and data to understand their own energy use, so they can be more efficient and work with utilities in a symbiotic way that benefits everyone. She is an advocate and educator around the digital transformation, believing in attracting the talent necessary to truly transform the industry.

The RF Board of Directors meets on May 2, 2024, at the RF Offices in Cleveland.

RF President and CEO Tim Gallagher provided a president’s report with updates including working with the North American Reliability Corporation (NERC) to convert the Electric Reliability Organization (ERO) roadmap into a long-term strategic plan. He highlighted participation in recent engagements, including speaking at the North American Transmission Forum (NATF) and attending an AEP Compliance Seminar. Gallagher noted that RF and the board will continue discussion of the risks that large load data centers can create for the grid and how to address this. He also provided a very warm welcome for guest speaker, Howard Gugel, NERC’s vice president of compliance assurance and registration.

Gugel shared NERC’s findings from its 2023 ERO Reliability Risk Priorities Report. Highlights included the addition of policy as a new risk profile, and how state and federal policy have affected the industry as a whole and are being built into load forecasts. He also covered inverter-based resources (IBRs) and the next steps for IBR registration.

Davey Lopez, MISO’s lead – resource adequacy planning, and Asanga Perera, PJM’s senior manager – planning, also joined our board meeting to discuss resource adequacy studies and projections in the PJM and MISO footprints.

The board also received updates from RF Senior Director of Corporate Services Beth Dowdell on RF’s financial position, from Chief Security Officer Marcus Noel on RF’s organizational security maturity and goals, and from Diane Holder, vice president of entity and engagement and corporate services, on RF’s state outreach work and upcoming events, including RF’s Fall Reliability & Security Summit in Indianapolis. The chairs of each of the board committees (Risk & Compliance, Finance & Audit, Talent & Compensation, Nominating & Governance) also shared updates from their meetings the day before.