Don Miller, an engineer whose career wove in and out of PJM since the late 1980s, attended his last PJM meetings last week.
FirstEnergy Corp.’s RTO policy manager, Miller retires effective Friday after 30 years at FE and its predecessor, General Public Utilities. He will be replaced by Jim Benchek.
Miller, 60, first worked on PJM activities in the late 1980s when he was doing transmission planning for GPU. He returned several years ago as part of FE’s FERC and RTO support team, serving on several PJM committees.
In between he helped smooth ATSI’s integration into PJM, helped FE prepare for the mandatory reliability standards authorized by Congress in the 2005 Energy Policy Act and participated in various projects related to industry restructuring.
Several of his former FE colleagues now work at PJM, including Andy Ott, Steve Herling and Jeff Bastian.
Miller said the basic PJM stakeholder process hasn’t changed much over the years. “We have always had equity issues, with a lot of spirited discussion among participating companies,” he said in an interview last week. “It’s the same now except there’s a lot more companies involved.”
He rarely spoke publicly at meetings. “My philosophy,” he said, “was to work on issues behind the scenes.”
Miller, who lives in Lancaster County, Pa., plans to remain there after retiring. He’s looking forward to spending more time hunting, fishing, traveling, visiting family and doing volunteer work through his church with his wife of 35 years.
“You want to spend as much time as you can in the go-go stage” of retirement, he said. “The longer you work the less time you have.”
