PJM has announced that Paul McGlynn, vice president of planning, will retire in 2025 and his role will be filled by Jason Connell, executive director of transmission and resource adequacy planning. 

McGlynn is set to continue serving with PJM through March 31, 2025, with Connell taking over as planning vice president on Jan. 1, 2025, to allow for a transitionary period. Connell has held several positions in PJM’s system planning department over his 12 years with the RTO, which came after a career at PECO doing transmission and substation engineering. 

“This is an incredibly dynamic time to be planning for the evolution of this industry,” Connell said in a PJM announcement. “I am excited to support and continue PJM’s important work to design and manage the grid of the future while preserving reliability.” 

Aftab Khan, executive vice president for operations, planning and security, said Connell “brings strong planning experience and leadership capabilities to ensure a smooth transition and to manage the evolving needs of the PJM grid.” He also thanked McGlynn for 17 years of contributions to PJM’s operations and planning departments. 

McGlynn was named vice president of planning in November 2023 following the retirement of Ken Seiler. He then was managing PJM’s real-time dispatch operations and assisted in developing near-term reliability studies, load forecasting, and the coordination of generation and transmission outages. He previously served as PJM’s senior director of system planning, which saw him administering the Regional Transmission Expansion Plan (RTEP) process. (See Retirements and New Faces on PJM Executive Team.) 

“It has been my privilege to have worked in this industry,” McGlynn said. “I am proud to have been part of such an outstanding team doing extremely important work for the energy industry, and I know PJM will continue to forge ahead with efficiency, innovation and technologically sound solutions to fulfill our critical mission of reliability.”