Fortnightly Foremost Innovators 2020

For this year's Fortnightly Top Innovators, from the thirty-four nominations, we selected the most outstanding in our judgement for ten categories of innovation. These selections required us to make some very difficult decisions. Because all of the nominations we received are without exception impressive and impactful for our industry and the public we serve. And so, all of them are quite appropriately celebrated in the following pages. 

We picked the same number of nominations for special recognition last year, ten, for Fortnightly Top Innovators 2019, as the reader may recall. Though, we have retuned the ten categories befitting changes in the nature of the industry's latest innovations.

Specifically, we selected the Fortnightly Foremost Innovator in these ten categories: distributed generation, drones, environmental protection, microgrids, renewables integration, reliability and resilience, robotics, transmission, virtual reality, wearables. Without further ado, here are our selections for 2020.

This year's Fortnightly Foremost Innovator in distributed generation is the two-person team of Paul Toub and Matt Wallace of PPL Utilities. Paul and Matt developed a collar, installed at a customer's meter, that enables rapid connection of distributed resources like residential solar.

This year's Fortnightly Foremost Innovator in drones was a tie. Ok, we know that seems like a cop-out. But, really, both of these nominations are awesome. First, there's the four-person team of Kathy Hidalgo, Alyssa Grigoryan, Sunandra Singh, and Lucero Vargas of Southern California Edison. Kathy, Alyssa, Sunandra, and Lucero developed a comprehensive aerial inspection program including drones and even helicopters to spot grid vulnerabilities to mitigate wildfire risk. 

Second, there's the aforementioned six-person team of Gray Byers, Chris Hogg, Eileen Lockhart, Jayme Orrock, Tony Mallizzio, and Nathan Svoboda of Xcel Energy. Gray, Chris, Eileen, Jayme, Tony, and Nathan pioneered autonomous aerial inspection of remote and distant wind farm turbines using advanced sensors and simulation. It's kinda like playing flight training video games, they say. Cool!

This year's Fortnightly Foremost Innovator in environmental protection is Jessica Fox of the Electric Power Research Institute. Jessica established Power-in-Pollinator to build tools that utilities can use to protect biodiversity around utility facilities.

This year's Fortnightly Foremost Innovator in microgrids is Jeff Wadsworth of Poudre Valley Rural Electric Association. Under Jeff's leadership, Poudre Valley is working with Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association and the U.S. Department of Energy to construct a microgrid to maintain reliability in the remote and mountainous Red Feathers Lake community that heretofore has been supplied by a single transmission line that is vulnerable to outages.

This year's Fortnightly Foremost Innovator in renewables integration is Gabriel Ortiz Mercado of First Solar. The leader of a hundred and forty-one megawatt solar farm in a Chilean desert, Gabriel collaborated with the country's grid operator to provide ancillary services from the facility, a cutting edge value from solar first tried by the California Independent System Operator.

This year's Fortnightly Foremost Innovator in reliability and resilience was also a tie. We went back and forth and just couldn't decide. First, there's the five-person team of Faton Bacaj, Michael Colburn, Dave Geier, Christian Henderson, and Stephen Johnston of San Diego Gas and Electric. Their innovation is so neat! Faton, Michael, Dave, Christian, and Stephen came up with a new material for balloons that doesn't conduct electricity like Mylar, so it doesn't cause outages of overhead lines. Keep this in mind when planning for your next kids' birthday party.

Second, there's the six-person team of Jonathan Brownstein, Jamal Cherradi, Alejandro Komai, Matthew Mendoza, Adrienne Mok, and Eric Wang of Southern California Edison. Jonathan, Jamal, Alejandro, Matthew, Adrienne, and Eric put together an accurate wildfire risk model that inputs a massive amount of weather and other real-time data and continuously predicts critical and high-probability ignitions that require the utility's immediate attention.

Foremost Innovators

• This year's Fortnightly Foremost Innovator in robotics is Girija Sathyamurthy of Ameren. The utility's manager of robotic process automation (that's quite a title), Girija and her team have automated over thirty highly repetitive rules-based tasks that were heretofore performed manually.
• This year's Fortnightly Foremost Innovator in transmission is the four-person team of Anil Kondabathini, HyoJong Lee, Reynaldo Nuqui, and Jiuping Pan of Hitachi ABB Power Grids. Anil, HyoJong, Reynaldo, and Jiuping worked with Bonneville Power Administration, Argonne National Laboratory, University of Illinois, and University of Idaho to create an array of protections for high-voltage direct current systems to detect, alarm, and block malicious cybersecurity attacks on the stability of these critical systems. 
• This year's Fortnightly Foremost Innovator in virtual reality is the four-person team of Daniel Benke, Juan Cortez, Arron Pauley, and Lorne Poindexter of Ameren. Daniel, Juan, Arron, and Lorne enabled workers at the Callaway nuclear plant to recognize hazards and are now constructing a three-dimensional model of the plant for teaching safe procedures.
• This year's Fortnightly Foremost Innovator in wearables is Zachary Wassenberg of Burns & McDonnell. Zachary built a virtual reality capability into hard hats that already has more than nine hundred users and is significantly reducing the number of personnel that are deployed in the field.
• This year's Fortnightly Foremost Innovator in distributed generation is the two-person team of Paul Toub and Matt Wallace of PPL Utilities. 
• This year's Fortnightly Foremost Innovator in drones is the four-person team of Kathy Hidalgo, Alyssa Grigoryan, Sunandra Singh, and Lucero Vargas of Southern California Edison, and the six-person team of Gray Byers, Chris Hogg, Eileen Lockhart, Jayme Orrock, Tony Mallizzio, and Nathan Svoboda of Xcel Energy.
• This year's Fortnightly Foremost Innovator in environmental protection is Jessica Fox of the Electric Power Research Institute.
• This year's Fortnightly Foremost Innovator in microgrids is Jeff Wadsworth of Poudre Valley Rural Electric Association. 
• This year's Fortnightly Foremost Innovator in renewables integration is Gabriel Ortiz Mercado of First Solar. 
• This year's Fortnightly Foremost Innovator in reliability and resilience is the five-person team of Faton Bacaj, Michael Colburn, Dave Geier, Christian Henderson, and Stephen Johnston of San Diego Gas and Electric, and the six-person team of Jonathan Brownstein, Jamal Cherradi, Alejandro Komai, Matthew Mendoza, Adrienne Mok, and Eric Wang of Southern California Edison. 
• This year's Fortnightly Foremost Innovator in robotics is Girija Sathyamurthy of Ameren.
• This year's Fortnightly Foremost Innovator in transmission is the four-person team of Anil Kondabathini, HyoJong Lee, Reynaldo Nuqui, and Jiuping Pan of Hitachi ABB Power Grids.
• This year's Fortnightly Foremost Innovator in virtual reality is the four-person team of Daniel Benke, Juan Cortez, Arron Pauley, and Lorne Poindexter of Ameren. 
• This year's Fortnightly Foremost Innovator in wearables is Zachary Wassenberg of Burns & McDonnell.