​Todd Combs1.JPG

Todd Combs is the associate laboratory director for Idaho National Laboratory's Energy and Environment Science & Technology Directorate, where he manages 250+ research staff focused on advanced transportation, clean energy integration, advanced manufacturing and environmental issues. Before joining INL Dr. Combs served as the director of the Global Security Sciences (GSS) Division at Argonne National Laboratory where he lead a multidisciplinary research team of over 200 that found solutions to protect against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from a wide spectrum of national and global security threats.  He also served nearly 14 months as Argonne's interim associate laboratory director for Energy and Global Security, where he led an applied R&D organization of over 800 people addressing domestic and global sustainable energy and security issues. In his role, he oversaw research and operational activities of the energy systems, nuclear engineering, and global security sciences division. Todd began his DOE laboratory career in 2008 at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as an operations research scientist. He left for Argonne in 2012 while serving as group leader for Transportation Planning and Decision Science. His research has included energy systems modeling and analysis for DOE, most recently related to critical materials supply chains, as well as the application of modeling and simulation to national and homeland security issues for the departments of Defense and Homeland Security. Todd earned his doctorate in operations research and master's degree in operations analysis from the Air Force Institute of Technology, and is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. A colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve, his military experience includes assignments at the Air Force Research Laboratory, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the Air Force Studies and Analyses Agency. He is a member of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) and the Military Operations Research Society (MORS). 


​
​


​Charlton Clark is the Program Manager for Grid Integration within the Wind and Water Power Technologies Office in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) at the Department of Energy (DOE). In this role, he manages efforts to improve the deployment of wind energy and pumped hydro storage into the power system, support the adoption of successful integration techniques by utilities and broaden the understanding how the power system can be designed and operated with large amounts of wind power and how pumped storage can support growing needs for system flexibility. Prior to his arrival at DOE, Mr. Clark was a Staff Witness at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.  While working at FERC, Mr. Clark testified on a variety of engineering related issues in cases before the Commission including topics such as: generator availability metrics, issues surrounding reactive power, transmission facility upgrades and other issues.  Mr. Clark also participated in the successful negotiation of dozens of cases covering a variety of topics. Mr. Clark holds a Bachelor's and a Master's in Electrical Engineering from New Mexico State University, as well as, a graduate minor in Utility Regulatory Economics from the Center for Public Utilities at NMSU.

 


​

​J. Charles Smith is a member of the IEEE Power and Energy Society; a member of CIGRE, the International Council on Large Electric Systems; a member of the American Meteorological Society; a US representative to the IEA Wind Annex Task 25 on Design and Operation of Power Systems with Large Amounts of Wind Power, and a Fellow of the IEEE. He is a guest editor for the IEEE Power and Energy magazine, and a past editor for the IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy. Mr. Smith received the IEEE PES Ramakumar Family Renewable Energy Excellence Award in 2014. He received his BSME and MS degrees from MIT in 1970.  He currently serves as the Executive Director of the Utility Variable-Generation Integration Group (UVIG). Previously, he served as President of Electrotek Concepts, a power engineering consulting firm. He has over 45 years of experience in the electric power industry. 


D. Douglass.JPG​

​Dale Douglass From 1999 through 2014, Dr. Douglass was a Principal Engineer with Power Delivery Consultants, Inc., in Ballston Lake, NY. At PDC he consulted for a wide variety of manufacturers, consultants, and power utilities concerning statistical and dynamic thermal rating of overhead lines, substation terminal equipment, and power transformers, overhead line failure analysis and design, application of high temperature conductor, and limitation of wind-induced conductor motions. He taught courses and seminars involving transmission line design, uprating and line monitoring.
In 2015, he became principal of Douglass Power Consulting, LLC, where he continues to provide consulting services on: high-temperature sag calculation; aging behavior of conventional and high-temperature conductors; real-time line monitoring and rating; and field evaluation of utility line thermal ratings. He continues to present courses & seminars on voltage and current uprating of lines, conductor selection, and field verification of line ratings.  

​ken_fenton.jpg

​Ken Fenton is a senior scientific analyst with Colorado State University's Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA).  He works at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) in the Global Systems Division (GSD).  His primary focus is on forecast impact and quality assessment for decision support, where he develops operationally-relevant verification techniques and performs in-depth evaluations of product quality in the context of operational impacts.  Prior to joining the CIRA and NOAA teams, Ken served for eight years as a weather officer in the United States Air Force.  During that time, he led several teams responsible for global weather forecasting and software development while being stationed in Hawaii, Ohio, Nebraska, and Qatar.  Ken earned an undergraduate degree in meteorology from the United States Air Force Academy, a master's degree in Applied Physics from the Air Force Institute of Technology, and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.