Top Innovators
Steve Mitnick is Executive Editor at Public Utilities Fortnightly and President of its parent company, Lines Up, Inc.
Edith Clarke’s pioneering engineering and mathematical work in the nineteen twenties and thirties made it possible to build transmission lines of two hundred miles or longer (without instability), essential for electrifying the western U.S. and elsewhere. Acclaimed in her day though not enough since, due to her gender, we named the Top Innovator Award in Reliability after Clarke. And this year, gave that award to teams from Exelon/BGE and PG&E.
Lewis Latimer was also acclaimed in his day, in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, and not enough since in part due to the color of his skin. Latimer was a serial innovator who made the mass production of Thomas Edison’s light bulbs economical among his contributions to telephony and electrification. So, we named the Top Innovator Award in Technology or Process Design after Latimer and gave that award this year to teams from PNM Resources and PSEG.
George Westinghouse arguably deserves as much or more credit for the development of the alternating current grid as Nikola Tesla. He was out-lawyered and out-financed by Thomas Edison but nevertheless made his systems the model at the 1893 world’s fair in Chicago and the 1895 opening of the Niagara Falls hydro power plant. Teams from Ameren and Xcel Energy won the Top Innovator Award for Leadership in Innovation this year, aptly named after Westinghouse.
Though few know today the accomplishments of Bertha Lamme, that Niagara Falls hydro power plant was designed by her and her brother, she the mechanical engineer and he the electrical engineer. How fitting that a team from Ontario Power Generation as well as a team from Portland General Electric won the Bertha Lamme Top Innovator Award in Generation this year.
Everyone thought Charles Steinmetz was a genius and he was, for among things, applying his mathematics to the widespread deployment of AC and AC motors. Known as the Forger of Thunderbolts, we named the Top Innovator Award in Network or Grid Operations after Steinmetz. Teams from Southern Company and Puget Sound Energy took this honor in 2024.
In the nineteen seventies, Nancy Fitzroy was manager of energy and environmental programs for GE’s gigantic turbine market and products division. She once retold in an interview that a major oil company recruiter at her college campus had said to her, “Little girl, what are you doing here?” We honor Fitzroy and a team at Con Edison with this year’s Top Innovator Award in Environment and Safety.
Maria Telkes was known in her day in the nineteen seventies and eighties as the Sun Queen. She was the founding mother of solar thermal and storage systems. So of course, the Top Innovator Award in Distributed Energy, that was won by a team at Exelon/Pepco Holdings this year, is named after Telkes.
Thomas Edison’s mathematician, that’s what they called Francis Upton. It makes all the sense in the world then that the Top Innovator Award in Analytics is named after Upton. He also helped invent the electric meter and did invent the electric fire alarm. The Analytics Award went in 2024 to a team at AES and a team at Eversource.
Arguably, Edison’s top engineer was William Hammer. His discovery of Hammer’s Phantom Shadow, which Edison promptly renamed the Edison Effect, was essential to the widespread adoption of electric lighting. He also invented the electric advertising sign and Times Square was forever changed. Fitting that it’s the William Hammer Top Innovator Award in Electrification, and that teams at Ameren and the New York Power Authority won it this year.
Teams at Consumers Energy and PPL Corp. won the John Beggs Top Innovator Award in Energy Transition. Who was John Beggs? As Thomas Upton was Edison’s mathematician and William Hammer his top engineer, Beggs was his genius developer, starting electric companies in St. Louis, Milwaukee, and Cincinnati among his many accomplishments.
After Mabel MacFerran graduated first in her class at MIT in 1925 and earned another degree from Stanford a year later, majoring in electrical engineering, she was the sole woman on the massive project to install the power generating systems at the Hoover Dam. She was also involved in the development of the Colorado River Aqueduct project and later worked for the Metropolitan Water District in California. Naturally, the Top Innovator Award in Energy Storage, won this year by a team at PG&E, is named after her.
Known as the Grand Lady of Heat Transfer in her day, Florence Fogler was GE’s expert in thermodynamics, in the nineteen twenties, and she made breakthroughs in the power output and efficiency of steam turbines. Told by the head of MIT’s electrical engineering department that a woman can’t be an electrical engineer, she went on to become the first women elected to AIEE and paired with Edith Clarke to drive the advancement in transmission. A team at PG&E was honored this year with the Florence Fogler Top Innovator Award in Energy Transmission Technologies.
Alan Turing is better known today. As told in the hit film, The Imitation Game, Turing helped win World War II with his rudimentary computer at Bletchley Park that broke Nazi codes. So, the Top Innovator Award in Cybersecurity is named after the Father of Computer Science and was given this year to a team at Ameren.
Talk about well known today. With the popular car named after him, Nikola Tesla’s discoveries, genius, and quirks have been immortalized in a number of films. As we have done with the Top Innovator Award in Artificial Intelligence, which went to a team from Southern California Edison this year.
And last but not least, a team at Entergy worked with Enchanted Rock on an inspiring project and received the Edison Pioneers Collaborative Innovation of the Year Award. Edison Pioneers was a club of the elite of the elite innovators of the early twentieth century, which included a few of the greats mentioned above.
