Women in DR Update:
The Business Case for Distributed Energy Resources

Mona Chandra is a Lead Program Manager with National Grid. As part of the New Energy Solutions group at National Grid, she is leading the Demand Response efforts in MA. Previously she part of the Market Strategy group at National Grid and was leading the long team market strategy for energy efficiency in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New York. She was the Project Manager and design lead for the Sustainability Hub, and outreach and education space for National Grid customers who are part of the Smart Energy Solutions pilot program in Worcester, MA. She was a practicing architect for 12 years, specializing in energy efficient design, prior to joining National Grid in 2012. She has a Master of Science in Energy and Climate and is passionate about scalable, sustainable energy solutions.

Jennifer (“Jennie”) Potter is a Sr. Scientific Engineering Associate in the Energy, where she conducts research on demand response, DERs, time based pricing, and energy efficiency. Presently, Jennie is a project lead on the 2015 California Demand Response Potential Study. Prior to joining LBL, Jennie worked at Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) in several different roles. She has worked as the Principal Market Analyst in the Pricing and Resource Planning department at SMUD, where she helped lead the 2015 rate case preprocess and conducted analysis and simulations on load data for the utility.

Jennie spent three years as the Project Manager on SMUD’s SmartSacramento team working on the Department of Energy ARRA grant funded Consumer Behavior Study, currently known as SmartPricing Options pricing pilot. Jennie was responsible for the pilot's marketing, implementation, procurement efforts, data collection and management of the evaluation team for the interim and final evaluation of the pilot. While at SMUD, she worked as the customer strategy planner for residential and small commercial energy efficiency and incentive programs, where she planned, budgeted and coordinated a number of programs related to Energy Efficiency.

Caroline M. McAndrews is the Director of the Preferred Resources Pilot. She is leading a team to determine if the integrated use of preferred resources may offset electricity demand growth in the southern region of SCE territory. This innovative project requires new methods for portfolio design, acquisition and measurement of preferred resources.

Caroline joined SCE in 1996 and has held various positions within the company in engineering, regulatory affairs and licensing, performance improvement, oversight/quality assurance, power plant operations and training. She holds a California Professional Engineering License and has a Bachelor of Science degree in Nuclear Engineering.

Gwen is Program Manager for the Distributed Energy Resources organization within Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), a branch of the Department of Energy. Gwen came to BPA eight years ago with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business and Finance from Washington State University and 13 years private industry experience specializing in trend analysis. Gwen joined the Distributed Energy Resources group in November 2015 and is currently developing a commercialization plan for BPA that will align BPAs needs with non-wire alternatives and applicable DER resources.

Robin Maslowski is an Associate Director with Navigant Consulting, Inc. Ms. Maslowski provides expertise in the areas of demand response and smart grid, including cost-benefit assessment, strategic planning, program evaluation, and potential assessment. Her recent work includes determining market potential and implementation strategies for demand response resources, developing business cases for smart grid deployment, building customized analytical modeling tools, and identifying key areas of opportunity for market growth, such as the integration of renewables using demand response and smart grid technologies.