PJM’s Nominating Committee has named two candidates to fill vacant seats on the RTO’s Board of Managers: Robert Ethier, former ISO-NE executive, and Le Xie, faculty co-director of the Power and AI Initiative at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. 

The RTO’s Members Committee (MC) will vote on the two candidates during its Sept. 25 meeting. Ethier and Xie would be filling board positions left open after PJM stakeholders declined to re-elect two members during the May Annual Meeting. (See PJM Stakeholders Reaffirm Board Election Results.) 

During his time at ISO-NE, Ethier filled three vice president positions — system planning, market operations and market development — between 2008 and 2024 and is now a principal at Stickney Brook Consulting, based in Florence, Mass.  

In a June 2024 announcement of Ethier’s retirement from the New England grid operator, ISO-NE President Gordon van Welie said, “Bob possesses a wide breadth of knowledge coupled with deep understanding of many aspects of the incredibly complex system we manage.” 

Xie has served as a professor at Harvard since 2024, before which he taught at Texas A&M University starting in 2010 and held previous roles at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a fellow and distinguished lecturer at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and has served as an editor for the group’s Transactions on Power Systems journal. 

In an announcement of the selection, Nominating Committee Chair Jeanine Johnson recognized the widespread interest in PJM’s leadership. Nine state governors wrote to the Board of Managers in a July 16 letter requesting a formal, permanent role for member states in selecting two seats on the nine-member board. Virginia Energy Director Glenn Davis attended the July 23 MC meeting, along with a delegation from other states, calling for a new vision of how PJM and the states interact. 

“The Nominating Committee is confident that Bob and Le will make significant contributions as PJM board members,” Johnson wrote. “The Nominating Committee would like to acknowledge the interest of the PJM states in the activity of the Nominating Committee and appreciates the proposal of candidates. The Nominating Committee considered the proposed candidates, followed its process and code of conduct, and selected nominees best aligned with the position description adopted by the committee.” 

The governors of Pennsylvania and Virginia co-signed an Aug. 11 letter recommending recently retired FERC Chair Mark Christie and former FERC Commissioner Allison Clements to fill the positions. (See Pa., Va. Governors Float Clements, Christie as PJM Board Candidates.)  

“As governors from different parties, we have points of disagreement on energy policy, but we are united by the need to get PJM back on track to fixing the problems we collectively face,” the two governors wrote. “By working together with a diverse, bipartisan coalition of governors, we are committed to solving these collective problems and to ensuring that the citizens of our states and the region receive the affordable, reliable power that they deserve.” 

FERC granted PJM a waiver of the requirement that it take no more than one month to bring board candidates before the MC following a vacancy, a move the RTO argued was necessary to “ensure sufficient time to identify potential board members and to complete appropriate due diligence, including background checks, prior to announcing the proposed nominees to be considered and voted on by the Members Committee.” (See PJM Files Waiver Seeking Additional Time to Select Board Candidates.)