Commissioner
Anthony O'Donnell is a Commissioner for the Maryland Public Service Commission.
The PUF team had a warm welcome at the PSC offices in Baltimore on the upper floors of the William Donald Schaefer building. Maryland punches well above its weight, with an expansive grid modernization portfolio, ambitious electric vehicle and charging programs, utility-scale batteries deployed as grid assets, and more, backed up by a diverse renewable generation portfolio and nuclear power at the Calvert Cliffs plant. All this is made possible by the Commission Staff of some one hundred and fifty, required by statute to be located in Baltimore, so legislative business entails a drive to Annapolis. Five Commissioners lead this accomplished Staff, and they all have a lot to say about what makes Maryland special and unique.
PUF's Lori Burkhart: Talk about your background and whether working in the Maryland legislature has helped you with your work at the Commission?
Commissioner O'Donnell: I grew up in a small town in south central Pennsylvania called Middletown. That's where Three Mile Island was. Out of high school, I went into the United States Navy.
The accident at Three Mile Island happened in 1979, which is the year I graduated from high school. I went off to bootcamp, but I went into the nuclear Navy and was trained as a nuclear operator and a nuclear technician.