When: Oct 1, 6:30pm

Where: Virtual

We’ll be joined by Erik Ela an expert in electricity markets and how they can help integrate larger amounts of both utility scale and distributed renewable energy resources to reduce costs and emissions. The presentation will provide an overview of how markets work and what the Southwest Power Pool’s RTO West and Markets + initiatives will mean for Colorado and our renewable energy goals.

Erik specializes in electricity market design and operations, renewable energy and emerging technology integration, bulk power system operations, essential reliability services, resource planning, and electricity policy. He is the Director of System Operation and Electricity Markets for the Energy Systems Integration Group (ESIG) and has been the Program Manager at EPRI supporting its research program on electricity market design and operations and topics related to transmission operations and planning. Prior to joining EPRI in 2014, Ela worked for several years with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) as a senior research engineer and before that for the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO). He has been involved in several working groups of the IEEE Power and Energy Society, CIGRE, NERC, and ESIG, including as the chair of the IEEE Power System Economics Subcommittee, chair of ESIG’s System Operations and Market Design Working Group, associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, and part of NYISO’s Environmental Advisory Council. Ela received his BS, MS, and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering.