Board of Directors

Carl Besaw, Chairman

Carl Besaw is a Project Manager with Southern California Edison’s (SCE) Tariff Programs and Services group. He is currently leading demand response (DR) emerging markets and technology efforts. In this role, he is responsible for identifying future technology solutions and evaluating them for DR capabilities, potential energy savings, compatibility with Edison SmartConnectTM meters, adherence to open standards, and integration with SCE’s portfolio of DR programs.

Carl began his career working for effectiveness expert Steven R. Covey where he supported software planning tools and other technology solutions. Prior to coming to SCE, Carl held project/product management and consulting positions with several niche software companies managing the development of software and other technology solutions for the insurance, finance, automotive, and equipment rental industries.

Carl holds a Bachelor degree from Brigham Young University and a MBA from Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business and Management. He is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and was a founding board member of the OpenADR Alliance.

Girish Ghatikar, Vice-Chairman

Girish Ghatikar is a Program Manager with U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory overseeing Demand Response (DR) technologies, Open Auto-DR (OpenADR) standards, international Smart Grid, and energy-related services and markets. Ghatikar’s background and experiences are in key areas of information technology, standards, technology transfer, and business innovation for Energy Efficiency, DR, Smart Grid, and its applications. Ghatikar serves on the Board of Directors and is the Vice Chairman for the OpenADR Alliance, Steering and Technical Committees for OASIS (Organization for Advancement of Structured Information Standards), and user groups to advance open Smart Grid innovation and acceleration.

Ghatikar holds Master degrees in Telecommunication Systems/ Computer Technologies, and Infrastructure Planning/ Management, and Bachelors degree in Architecture.

Albert Chiu, Secretary/Treasurer

Albert Chiu is a Lead Product Manager in the Integrated Demand Side Management (IDSM) Department at Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E). In his 12 years in IDSM, he has developed and implemented residential, 3rd party, low income, commercial and local government energy efficiency and demand response programs for utility customers. He is the lead of the DR Technology and Solutions Team in the Demand Response Emerging Market Department at PG&E and his team is also responsible for all Auto DR/PLS technologies development and implementation. At PG&E, he focuses on how to utilize the new technologies to integrated DR with CA electric Wholesale Market and addressing Intermittent Renewable Resource challenges.

Albert chairs the OpenADR Task Force within the Utility Communication Architect Internal User Group (UCAIug) and serves at the OpenADR Alliance board of directors. He also participates in the NIST National Smart Grid activities such as Priority Action Plan 3, 4 and 9. He is in multiple Technical Advisor Groups with CA universities and national labs.

Chris Knudsen, Director

Chris Knudsen is currently the Chief Technology Officer for AutoGrid Systems.  Autogrid is focused on organizing the exponentially increasing amount of energy data produced from a networked and automated grid, making it useful and actionable for electricity generators, providers, grid operators, and their customers. Chris, chairs the Open SmartGrid Technical Committee within UCAIug, sits on the NIST SmartGrid Architecture Committee, and advises the UC Berkeley Graduate Research LoCal Lab. 

Prior to AutoGrid, Chris held the position of Director, Technology Innovation Center at Pacific Gas & Electric,  Chief Technical Officer for Wireless Wide Area Networking Standards & Mobile Performance Labs within Intel’s Mobile Wireless Group, spent three years at Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital focusing on early stage wireless investments, led Metricom’s Ricochet development as Vice President of Hardware Engineering.  Earlier, He founded a start-up developing energy efficient home automation system. 

Chris started his career designing and developing radio systems for defense electronic applications.  Chris holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Davis and has completed work towards a Master of Technology Management at Santa Clara University. 

Dave Hardin, Director

Dave Hardin is Sr. Director of Smart Grid Standards for EnerNOC Inc. He has more than 25 years of experience designing, integrating and managing industrial information management and automation systems. He specializes in energy systems architecture and design. His experience includes modernizing the process control and enterprise production management systems at the (now) PBF Energy Delaware Refinery as well as roles including Project Manager, System Architect and Technology Officer at Invensys Production Management.

Dave serves as Vice-Chair of the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) Architecture Committee; Chair of the SGIP Industrial-to-Grid Domain Expert Working Group, member of the SGIP Program Management Office, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation Smart Grid Task Force, the OPC Foundation Technical Advisory Committee and is member emeritus of the U.S Department of Energy’s GridWise Architecture Council.

Dave holds a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering from the University of Delaware. He is a Registered Professional Engineer (DE/MD), an IEEE Certified Software Development Professional (CSDP) and a PMI Project Management Professional (PMP).

Ed Koch, Director

Ed Koch is currently a Senior Fellow at Honeywell and co-founder and CTO for Akuacom, Inc., a leader in Automated Demand Response (ADR) software. Akuacom was acquired by Honeywell International in May 2010.  Mr. Koch is responsible for leading Akuacom’s R&D efforts and intellectual property decisions.
 
Mr. Koch also served as the lead for the working group at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) that drafted the Open Automated Demand Response (OpenADR) version 1.0 Specification. Working in partnership with LBNL, Akuacom drove development of the Open Automated Demand Response (OpenADR) protocol, endorsed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) as a key Smart Grid interoperability standard.  Mr. Koch continues to be actively involved in various Smart Grid standards efforts within SGIP, UCAIug, IEC, OASIS and NAESB.
    
Prior to founding Akuacom, Mr. Koch was co-founder and CTO of Coactive Networks where he led Coactive's engineering efforts and established its architecture and technical directions.  Previously, Mr. Koch managed the Automotive Systems Department of Navteq, where he led development of the first Automotive Route Guidance Systems, which are widely deployed today. He holds several patents in the areas of Distributed Control, Automation, Vehicle Guidance, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and Embedded Systems, and has led standardization efforts for the Intelligent Vehicle Highway Systems and Consumer Electronics Associations.  Mr. Koch holds a BS and MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Florida.