Friday, March 1, Noon CST
1 hour MCLE Credit
Join us for a webinar next month as panelists Kristina Rollins, Katherine Gross, and John Padalino present Legal, including Regulatory, Considerations for Virtual Power Plants and Other Aggregations of Demand Response or Distributed Energy Resources. This session will offer 1 hour MCLE credit.
Course Description: Electric customers’ interest in demand response or Distributed Energy Resources (DERs), like residential solar panels, has substantially increased in recent years. The electric industry is investigating how to more beneficially deploy such customer participation. Panelists will discuss current programs that are in place or being developed that aggregate DERs or customer demand response in Texas and what regulations or other Texas laws currently apply to such programs.
Three different paradigms will be addressed – competitive offerings by a Retail Electric Provider, programs of an electric cooperative, and the ERCOT Aggregated DER pilot overseen by the Public Utility Commission of Texas. Panelists will share what they’ve learned in developing these programs and whether they believe additional policies or regulations might be warranted.
Panelists: Kristina Rollins, NRG Energy, Inc.
Kristina is the Assistant General Counsel, Regulatory Affairs for NRG Energy, Inc. (NRG). She advises the NRG family of retail electric providers (REPs) in Texas regarding legal and regulatory compliance and actively engages in advocacy on their behalf. Over the course of her career, Kristina has represented REPs, power generation companies, transmission and distribution utilities, vertically integrated utilities, and served as the team lead of the Commission Advising & Docket Management Division of the Public Utility Commission of Texas. This depth and breadth of experience has enabled her to work collaboratively with external stakeholder groups and regulatory bodies in law, rule, and policy development.
Kristina holds a B.A. in History and Government from the University of Texas at Austin and a J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law. She is board certified in Administrative Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization and served as the Chair of the Public Utility Law Section of the State Bar of Texas from 2015-2016.
Katherine Gross, Electric Reliability Council of Texas. Inc.
Katherine, Senior Corporate Counsel, ERCOT, has been with ERCOT for approximately two years, having previously served for about three years as the Enforcement Manager at the Texas RE. Prior to TRE, Katherine served in several attorney roles at the PUCT for over 10 years after earning her juris doctorate from Ohio State University.
John Padalino, Bandera Electric Cooperative
John is a public policy and utilities expert. John joined Bandera Electric Cooperative in 2019 as General Counsel and Chief Administrative Officer. In his role, John represents the cooperative in all legal, legislative, and regulatory matters, including overseeing the corporate services division. He has significant experience in developing and managing renewable energy, distributed energy, energy efficiency, and energy analytics projects. In 2022, Mr. Padalino was appointed to the Aggregated Distributed Energy Resources ERCOT Pilot Project Task Force by the Public Utility Commission of Texas.
John spent over six years working for the United States Department of Agriculture and served as the Administrator of USDA’s Rural Utilities Service from 2012 to 2014. Mr. Padalino earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Texas at Austin and his Doctor of Jurisprudence (JD) from Rutgers School of Law.