By Rich Heidorn Jr.

CAMBRIDGE, Md. — Retiring PJM board members Jean Kinsey and Richard Lahey marked their final Annual Meeting last week with reminiscences on the industry’s past and some views on its future.

Lahey, former dean of engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an expert on nuclear reactor safety technology, was one of two original PJM board members, having joined with Chairman Howard Schneider 19 years ago.

He was there as PJM grew from its roots as a “tight power pool” to its current 13-state footprint with wholesale energy, capacity and ancillary services markets. It became the nation’s first fully functioning ISO in 1997 and the first RTO in 2001.

Diverse Backgrounds

“We had some advantages in that it wasn’t unusual for us to operate that kind of grid,” he said, noting PJM was founded in 1927. “The disadvantage was you were sort of entrenched in a certain way of doing it and it didn’t scale up. Fortunately, there were people on the board who had been from large corporations, and they made some very positive suggestions on how to scale it up.”

At the beginning, Lahey recalled, “our independence was challenged by some of the members, and we took a position that we weren’t going to sit at the board unless we were independent. And because we did that we’ve been able to function very well.”

Lahey said a strength of the board has been its diversity. “There’s people from retail, there’s people from Wall Street-type backgrounds. There’s people from universities, from the industry. What it means is when we come to reach a decision, we have very rich discussions. And a lot of times there’s quite a few changes depending on the input.”

Only a few votes were not unanimous, he recalled.

Steep Learning Curve

Kinsey, who holds a doctorate in agricultural economics and is a former University of Minnesota professor who specialized in food safety, recalled the “steep learning curve” she faced after joining the board 13 years ago.

She said the board’s biggest challenge over her tenure was its efforts to perfect PJM’s market design. “We keep tweaking the market as the environment in which [generators] operate changes,” she said, noting current challenges in incorporating the externalities of carbon emissions.

“Going forward, I think the major challenge is going to be how you operate an efficient grid with a lot of smaller generating units — microgrids, behind-the-meter [generation],” she said. “The grid magnifies the economies of scale. If you have things peeling off that, how can you keep the value of that core operation?”

Retirement Plans

Lahey, who retired from RPI seven years ago, is hoping to reduce his outside consulting work to spend more time boating and on the beach with his family at his home in St. Augustine, Fla. “If you retire, it’s sort of nice to have time to enjoy yourself,” he said.

Kinsey, who retired five and a half years ago from Minnesota, is president of the university’s retiree’s association. She plans to spend her free time learning photography.

“I’ve become quite interested in photography becoming art, where you can take a piece of a picture and create a design out of it,” she said. “The other part of my brain is crying to be recognized.”