PANEL #13 Hydro's MW Valuation Considerations in the Marketplace Wednesday, February 26, 2025 8:30 a.m. - 9:30 a.m.
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Colin Sasthav Department of Energy
Mike Wilding PacifiCorp
Pot pie of speakers representing various financial positions in the hydropower market including merges & acquisitions, federal grants/loans, rate cases, buy/sell, marketplace valuations, and considerations with the changing federal programs.
This panel is within the Hot Topics at the conference. This is a general interest topic relevant to anyone working in the Northwest.
Moderator: Diane Barr, CEO, Camas LLC
Panelists:
Speaker Bios:
Diane Barr is the owner and founder of Camas, LLC, a regulatory consulting firm supporting the energy industry for over 25 years. Ms. Barr has spent a portion of her career working within regulated and non-regulated energy companies and owning and operating a company. This diverse background has allowed her to support power market strategies, inter-connection agreements, outdated flood curves restricting generation, asset acquisition due diligence, and barriers to market for small hydro operations. She has presented in the US and Central America on standing up top-tier corporate compliance programs for environmental and asset management. Ms. Barr remains committed to the future of hydroelectric power in our national grid resiliency through her Board of Director role with the NWHA, NHA participation, and membership in the US Society on Dams Public Safety Committee.
Matthew Shapiro first entered the field of renewable energy development nearly 35 years ago, when he started out as a wind energy site scout and development strategist. He immediately saw the potential for the use of pumped storage hydro to firm wind energy and compete against fossil generation, but there wasn't much interest at the time. In 2009, seeing an emerging need for new energy storage resources, he formed Gridflex Energy to pursue the best new pumped storage prospects in the US. In 2019, Gridflex and then-new renewable energy development firm rPlus Energies joined forces to create rPlus Hydro, which today is a leading developer of new US pumped storage projects, including two at the Final License Application stage with FERC. Matthew leads the pumped storage development effort.
Colin Sasthav is a Technology Manager for the Department of Energy Water Power Technologies Office. He earned his PhD in Energy Science and Engineering from the University of Tennessee Knoxville where he studied how to reduce costs and improve environmental performance for small hydropower. Now he manages a portfolio of hydropower research and development initiatives focusing on small hydropower development, advanced materials and manufacturing, and innovation testing with the goal of getting sustainable hydropower technologies in the water.
David Howell has been working in the energy industry for regulated utilities for over 25 years. He has engineering, operations, and leadership experience related to gas transmission and distribution system, electric transmission and distribution, and both thermal and hydro generation.
Mike Wilding- As vice president of energy supply management, Mike Wilding is responsible for directing PacifiCorp’s front office organization in commercial and trading activities and leading PacifiCorp’s market development efforts. He leverages a decade of experience navigating and solving many complex regulatory and cost-recovery issues for the company. Energy supply management is responsible for commercially managing PacifiCorp’s diverse generation portfolio. This includes power and natural gas hedging, term and day-ahead trading, real-time trading, generation dispatch and system balancing. Mr. Wilding also oversees the company’s environmental reporting and policy departments. For PacifiCorp’s market development and expansion efforts, Mr. Wilding led PacifiCorp’s engagement in the stakeholder process of the design and tariff development phases of both the CAISO Extended Day Ahead Market and the Western Resource Adequacy Program. His efforts are now turned to onboarding and implementation of EDAM and WRAP.