By Hudson Sangree
The retirement this month of two key leaders at CAISO has created new and expanded roles for others in the ISO’s executive wing.
Keith Casey, vice president of market and infrastructure development, retires this month after 22 years. Nancy Traweek, executive director of system operations, also departs in January after more than two decades with CAISO.
Casey was part of the ISO’s start-up team in 1997. He headed the Department of Market Monitoring from 2005 to 2009.
Traweek started at CAISO in 1997 and became the manager of market operations two years later. She took over system operations in 2012 and helped establish the Western Energy Imbalance Market.
Industry representatives and CAISO staff heaped praised on Casey and Traweek during the final Board of Governors meeting of 2019.
“Nancy has been a bedrock of the reliability function for 20 years here at the ISO,” Mark Smith, vice president of government and regulatory affairs at Calpine, said at the Dec. 19 meeting. “She has been a pioneer as a woman in this role, as a leader in reliability functions, certainly 20 years ago and even today.
“Keith has been a coach, a mentor, an antagonist, sometimes an advocate, but always a friend,” Smith said of Casey.
CAISO CEO Steve Berberich echoed the sentiments.
“Nancy has just been a tremendous asset at the ISO, a great part of our family,” Berberich said.
A woman “running the grid operation is something truly unique in our industry,” he said. “She blazed some great trails that I know people can look up to.”
Casey had “tremendous responsibilities here at the ISO principally around policy and market design and transmission planning,” Berberich said. His policy and transmission planning roles will be split between two current CAISO executives, Mark Rothleder and Neil Millar, the CEO said.
Millar, who had been serving as executive director of infrastructure development, was appointed vice president of transmission planning and infrastructure development, effective Jan. 1, according to CAISO.
Rothleder, vice president of market quality and California regulatory affairs, will oversee the ISO’s market and infrastructure policy team, previously part of Casey’s group. He also assumed his expanded role Jan. 1.