Government

DOE Grid Controls Leader Bindewald Headlining Microgrid Conference Plenary

Feb. 23, 2024

The Microgrid Knowledge Conference runs from Monday, April 22 to Wednesday, April 24 at the Marriott Waterfront along Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. General session panelists and presenters will include energy leaders from all walks of the microgrid value chain from developers, contractors and state leaders to utility, non-utility, grid services and customer sectors.

Rod Walton, Managing Editor

Memories of Microgrid Conference 2023 in Anaheim. Third from left in the right photo is DOE's Katrina Pielli, who will return this year as a plenary panelist in a session with DOE Grid Controls Deputy Secretary Gilbert Bindewald.

The nation’s most focused event on aggregated distributed energy resource and resiliency projects, the Microgrid Knowledge 2024 Conference, happening April 22-24 along the historic Baltimore waterfront, is pleased to announce that U.S. Department of Energy’s grid controls leader Gilbert Bindewald will be a keynote speaker.

Bindewald, who is Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the DOE Office of Electricity’s Grid Controls and Communication unit, is a multi-decade veteran of the energy industry.

He will be part of the Tuesday, April 23 morning plenary with Katrina Pielli, who is director of the Office of Engagement at the DOE Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations. Pielli also is a member of the Microgrid Knowledge Conference advisory board.

The Bindewald and Pielli plenary chat is titled “Bringing It All Back Home: The U.S. Department of Energy is All-In and Future-Forward for Clean and Resilient Microgrid Expansion.” The two will discuss their career-long understandings of the distributed energy and on-site power movements, as well as talk about various paths to net zero goals going forward. They also will take questions from the audience.

Bindewald steps in for DOE Office of Electricity Assistant Secretary Gene Rodrigues, who had a scheduling conflict come up and could not participate in the plenary. Bindewald has held DOE leadership roles for some 20 years.

Prior to joining the federal government, he worked as an engineer at General Electric and Westinghouse Electric and was on the technical staff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory. Bindewald holds degrees from Harvard University and Union College (New York).

The Tuesday morning, April 23 plenary sessions begin at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time. The Microgrid Knowledge Conference runs from Monday, April 22 to Wednesday, April 24 at the Marriott Waterfront along Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.

Other plenary speakers over the course of the Microgrid 2024 Conference will include Laura Wright, vice president of technical services at Exelon-Baltimore Gas & Electric; Brandon Bowser, chief for clean energy and resilience at the Maryland Energy Administration; Think Microgrid Executive Director Cameron Brooks; Compass Energy Platform CEO Rick Bolton; Jim Glass of municipal utility EPB of Chattanooga (Tenn.); Together Louisiana’s Brodrick Bagert; and Alok Singhania of Gridscape Solutions.

General session panelists and presenters will include energy leaders from all walks of the microgrid value chain from developers, contractors and state leaders to utility, non-utility, grid services and customer sectors. These include Gallaudet University (Washington DC), St. Thomas University (Minnesota), Spirae, G&W Electric, Sovereign Resiliency Partners, Generate Capital, Schneider Electric, Arup, Duke Energy, Cobb EMC, Georgia Power, American Municipal Power, Ameren, PXiSE Energy Solutions, Rove Charging, Exelon, DC Byte, Distributed Sun, UL Solutions, AutoGrid-UpLight, Pacific Gas & Electric, Slipsteam, U.S. DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Commonwealth of Pennsylvania State Energy Office, Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet; Colorado Program for Microgrids for Community Resilience, CPower Energy Management, Xendee and Resilient Power Works LLC.

Microgrid Knowledge will also announce winners of the annual Greater Good Awards in the Wednesday, April 24 luncheon session.

Registration for Microgrid 2024 offers early bird discounts until March 17. Click here for more info and to register.

About the Author

Rod Walton, Managing Editor | Managing Editor

For Microgrid Knowledge editorial inquiries, please contact Managing Editor Rod Walton at [email protected].

I’ve spent the last 15 years covering the energy industry as a newspaper and trade journalist. I was an energy writer and business editor at the Tulsa World before moving to business-to-business media at PennWell Publishing, which later became Clarion Events, where I covered the electric power industry. I joined Endeavor Business Media in November 2021 to help launch EnergyTech, one of the company’s newest media brands. I joined Microgrid Knowledge in July 2023.

I earned my Bachelors degree in journalism from the University of Oklahoma. My career stops include the Moore American, Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise, Wagoner Tribune and Tulsa World, all in Oklahoma . I have been married to Laura for the past 33-plus years and we have four children and one adorable granddaughter. We want the energy transition to make their lives better in the future.

Microgrid Knowledge and EnergyTech are focused on the mission critical and large-scale energy users and their sustainability and resiliency goals. These include the commercial and industrial sectors, as well as the military, universities, data centers and microgrids. The C&I sectors together account for close to 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.

Many large-scale energy users such as Fortune 500 companies, and mission-critical users such as military bases, universities, healthcare facilities, public safety and data centers, shifting their energy priorities to reach net-zero carbon goals within the coming decades. These include plans for renewable energy power purchase agreements, but also on-site resiliency projects such as microgrids, combined heat and power, rooftop solar, energy storage, digitalization and building efficiency upgrades.