The Western Power Pool’s future independent board of directors will include the previous CEO of PJM, a former member of the Western Energy Imbalance Market’s Governing Body and the WPP’s present board chair, among others.

The WPP’s current board of directors last week approved the slate of nominees who will serve on the new independent board once the group’s Western Resource Adequacy Program (WRAP) is approved by FERC. The federal regulator requires organizations under its jurisdiction to maintain independent boards.

“This is an important step in the path toward WRAP implementation,” WPP Treasurer Mary Ann Pease said in a press release Friday. “I look forward to the continued development of a sustainable resource adequacy program, with the incredible benefits it will bring to participants, while ensuring we continue to deliver the benefits and cost savings the Western Power Pool has long provided our members and our region.”

According to the release, the board members were selected after a monthslong “continent-wide” search led by WPP’s 14-member Nominating Committee and assisted by an executive search firm.

“The committee’s stated criteria for candidates included electric industry, regulatory, general management, Western electric system or organized market experience; geographic diversity, so no region was overrepresented; diversity of perspectives, including professional background, gender, ethnicity and life experience; and strong collaboration skills,” WPP said.

Among those chosen to sit on the new board is current WPP board Chair Bill Drummond, who has held that position since 2018. Drummond formerly led the Mid-West Electric Consumers Association and previously served as administrator and deputy administrator of the Bonneville Power Administration.

But perhaps the most well known industry figure on the new board is Andy Ott, former CEO of PJM, the largest RTO in the country. Ott was at the helm of PJM when it kicked off an effort to partner with now-defunct reliability coordinator Peak Reliability to create an organized market that would compete with CAISO’s own efforts to expand into other parts of the West. (See Q&A: PJM’s Ott Still Looking West.)

The PJM-Peak Reliability effort dissolved after CAISO moved to undercut Peak’s core business by offering RC services to Western utilities at lower costs. Peak closed its doors at the end of 2019 after nearly losing nearly all of its customers to competing RCs.

Ott retired from PJM in 2019 amid the fallout from a massive default by a trader in the RTO’s financial transmission rights market. (See PJM CEO Andy Ott to Retire.) He is currently director of technical operations at Tapestry, X Development’s “moonshot” for the electric grid.

WPP’s other independent board members include:

• Doug Howe, former chair of the WEIM’s Governing Body and past member of New Mexico’s Public Regulation Commission. Howe is currently a consultant for the West Coast Public Utility Commissions’ Joint Action Framework on Climate Change. He previously led the Global Power consulting group for international consultancy IHS CERA and worked for various utilities.
• Michelle Bertolino, who served as director of Roseville Electric Utility in California for 12 years before retiring this year. Bertolino previously worked for the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and KPMG Peat Marwick. She has served as president of the Northwest Public Power Association and the California Municipal Utilities Association, and as chair and commissioner of the Balancing Authority of Northern California and the Transmission Agency of Northern California.
• Susan Ackerman, who last year retired as chief energy officer of the Eugene Water & Electric Board in Oregon. Before that Ackerman served as an attorney for BPA, an attorney and regulatory manager for NW Natural, and as a commissioner and chair of the Oregon Public Utilities Commission from 2010 to 2016.

Current board members Pease and Secretary Scott Waples will hold non-voting advisory seats on the new board, which will take effect after FERC approves the WRAP tariff and the program receives commitments from a “requisite” number of participants, WPP said.

“The varied backgrounds and expertise the new board members bring are first class,” Waples said. “The Western region, and the customers who rely on a reliable source of electricity, are in very good hands.”