Andy Dodge has left his position as director of FERC’s Office of Electric Reliability (OER), Chairman Richard Glick said at the commission’s open meeting Thursday. David Ortiz, who has served as the office’s deputy director for the past five years, has stepped in as acting director.

“I believe [these changes] will strengthen our bench to address growing threats to the reliability of the grid,” Glick said. “I want to thank Andy for his service in leading OER and thank David for agreeing to take on this added responsibility.”

OER oversees the development and review of reliability and security standards, as well as utilities’ compliance with those standards. It also leads or joins periodic reviews of the ERO Enterprise and utilities; leads or joins analysis and investigations of complaints, blackouts, near-misses or other issues with the bulk power system to determine whether standards were violated and if they are adequate for their purpose; and oversees NERC’s regular reliability assessments to identify constraints on the BPS. Joseph McClelland, the office’s inaugural director, now heads OESI.

Ortiz became deputy director of OER in April 2016 following a three-year stint as deputy assistant secretary for energy infrastructure modeling and analysis at the Department of Energy. He previously served as acting OER director for about nine months in 2018 after the departure of the previous director, Michael Bardee, stepping back when Dodge took over the same year.