Enabling Flexible Financing for Grid Resilience & Modernization

Update: Virtual meeting details can be found below.

Surging electricity demand in the US, as a result of data center demand and increasing electrification across industries, is adding pressure for utilities to focus on grid resiliency for existing assets and smart grid planning for future assets. To match electricity affordability and load management concerns, capital is flowing quickly to allow utilities to meet demand. A variety of flexible financing mechanisms are emerging to support utilities, such as virtual power plant (VPP) agreements and other distributed energy resource (DER) contracts. As utilities look towards the modern-day grid, resilient assets will also require sufficient insurance for a variety of natural disaster challenges.

The event will feature representatives from WSP, PG&E, and KeyBank. Panelists:

Alex Nadolishny, LEED PE is a member of WSP’s newly-formed Energy Infrastructure Solutions team. He possesses 32 years of experience in engineering design, innovative technology implementation as well as in emergency management, disaster response and recovery. Mr. Nadolishny has successfully completed many high-profile projects for large industrial and defense sector clients, private developers, public and private utilities, Federal, State and local government agencies focusing on implementation of innovative power and energy technologies. He also led work in key positions during major temporary power and infrastructure rehabilitation projects, including Hurricane Maria response, post- Superstorm Sandy work, as well as several post-9/11 projects. Alex has experience working in over 20 States and territories within USA, as well as in Denmark, Togo, Germany, Italy, Romania and Japan.

Chinmay Morankar is part of WSP's Power and Energy group. He leads systems engineering within renewables, the team mainly focuses on creating optimized design solutions for utility-scale renewable energy and microgrid projects. He has played a critical multidisciplinary leader role for various high-profile projects in the energy industry over his 11 years of experience so far. He is a mechanical engineer by education who is passionate about new age power grid. He thinks that the current scenario of large load growth is apt for innovative solutions coming in from all the stakeholders, and is excited to see the progress we make together as an industry. He is a Sr Member with IEEE and actively participates in various technical conferences and committees in the industry. Apart from the technical work and activities, he likes to play cricket and pickleball in his free time.

Sienna Rogers is currently the Senior Director of Corporate Development and Economic Analytics at PG&E Corporation. In this role, she is responsible for developing and implementing strategies that enhance PG&E’s financial resilience and improve customer affordability. Since joining PG&E, Sienna has held multiple positions spanning finance, strategy, policy, and finance functions.  Throughout her tenure, she has led a number of strategy and implementation teams focused on addressing the evolving energy landscape, including the evolution of the energy supply portfolio and the changing role of distributed energy resources in the energy value chain.  Sienna’s finance roles at PG&E included financial forecasting and analysis, investor relations, and most recently, restructuring strategy. Prior to PG&E, Sienna was with JPMorgan, supporting origination and structuring of leverage buyout transactions and analyzing investment and credit risk of client portfolio companies.  She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics and Computer Science from Duke University and an MBA from Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business.

Paul Pace is a Sr. Vice President and Team Leader of Energy Banking Group Portfolio Management (BGPM) in the Debt Capital Markets business at KeyBank. The Energy BGPM team is responsible for credit underwriting, origination and structuring as well as account management for the bank's Utilities, Power and Renewables and Oil and Gas industry verticals. Additionally, Mr. Pace oversees KeyBank’s P3 lending activities.  Mr. Pace helped build KeyBank’s renewable project finance franchise from scratch into the leading domestic lender in the space, with more than $40 billion of invested capital over its tenure. His team currently manages a diverse portfolio with commitment levels of more than $20 billion. Mr. Pace earned a B.A. from Northwestern University and an M.A. from The Ohio State University School of Journalism.

Virtual Event Details:

Microsoft Teams Link: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/364700690373692?p=ge2XW6zR4a0ltUqGC4

Meeting ID: 364 700 690 373 692

Passcode: wE3fU76o

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