Arizona Public Service
Kerri Carnes is Arizona Public Service Director of Customer-to-Grid Solutions, where she leads strategy, innovation, and execution for customer-sited energy technologies and virtual power plant programs. Her team develops and scales solutions spanning demand response, distributed energy resources, electric vehicles, and battery storage.
PUF recognizes each year those across the utilities industry who are not content to accept the status quo. Our Fortnightly Top Innovators stand out for ingenuity, resilience, and how they move the industry forward.
As PUF readies for Top Innovators 2026, we caught up with three 2025 award-winning innovators for a look at how their projects have advanced. These remarkable leaders reflect every dimension of the energy and utility industry’s transformation.
In these conversations, you will learn more about these innovative projects with APS’s Kerri Carnes on Virtual Power Plant Delivering Targeted Grid Support, Eversource’s Meiyan Li on Advancing DER Integration with Automated Model Validation Across Time Domains, and LUMA Energy’s David Cruz on Customer Battery Energy Sharing.
PUF’s Rachel Bryant: Your team won the reliability award after using the Cool Rewards program to surgically drop load on specific circuits during a catastrophic summer microburst. When you look back at that intense grid emergency, what made you realize your virtual power plant could be used as a localized restoration asset?