O&M USERS GROUP – SPRING MEETING 2026 AGENDA
Tuesday, March 31, 2026
7:00 a.m. – 8:00 a.m.
Registration & Breakfast
Location: Pershing North
8:00 a.m. – 12 p.m.
Opening Plenary: Strategic Operations
Location: Century A
Hold on to your spreadsheets – the Spring 2026 plenary session will dive into best practices and lessons learned related to strategic operations of wind farms. Speakers will cover tradeoffs between centralizing procedures and enabling regional autonomy, approaches to technician training and retention programs, and strategies for building operational resilience in today’s market. After the presentations, the audience will have an opportunity to ask questions and share their own insights. Don’t miss this engaging discussion about how to keep your teams (and turbines) spinning in sync.
- Engineering a Resilient Workforce
Wahba Tawfik & Darrel Lopez, EDF Power Solutions
- Insights and Best Practices for Asset Quality Programs
Joe Trzemzalski, Constellation
- Best Practices for Blade Maintenance Programs
Maulik Sonigra, Constellation
- Making the Case for Condition Monitoring and Digitalization
Tracy Duncan, TransAlta
12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Lunch
Location: TBA
1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Balance of Plant Roundtable
Roundtable Chair: Matt Allsup, Innergex
Location: Century B
1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
The Intelligent Grid – From Individual Action to Compliance Automation
Roundtable Moderator: Bjorn Hedges, NAES
Location: Pershing West
This session provides a comprehensive roadmap for leveraging AI across every scale of the energy landscape: including personal productivity, organizational efficiency, cybersecurity, and AI for modeling & compliance. Attendees will gain both the strategic “why” and the technical “how” to navigate this transition.
Wednesday, April 1 2026
7:00 a.m. – 8:00 a.m.
Registration & Breakfast
Location: Pershing North
8:00 a.m. – 12 p.m.
Solar 1 Roundtable: Panels and Trackers
Roundtable Chair: Christoper McNalley, Northstar Clean Energy
Location: Century A
8:00 a.m. – 12 p.m.
Blades Roundtable
Roundtable Chair: Noah Myrent, EPRI & Eric Robinson, Consumers Energy
Location: Pershing West
8:00 a.m. – 12 p.m.
Cybersecurity Roundtable
Roundtable Chair: Jordon Waggonner, Idaho National Laboratory & Dan Ricci, Idaho National Laboratory
Location: Pershing East
8:00 a.m. – 9:45 a.m.
Developer Session 1: Introduction to Developer Track
Location: Century B
- Introduction to the Developer Track
Alex Shattuck, Director of Grid Transformation, ESIG - How O&M Meetings Work
Bjorn Hedges, Plant Manager, White Creek Wind, NAES - Update on IEEE and NERC Standard Efforts
Curtiss Fox, Sr. Technical Leader, Renewable Energy, EPRI
9:45 a.m. – 10:15 a.m.
Break
Location: Ballroom Foyer
10:15 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Developer Session 2, Roundtable 1: IBR Unit Model Validation
Roundtable Chair: Alex Shattuck, Director of Grid Transformation, ESIG
Location: Century B
How to ensure that IBR unit and other applicable equipment models are validated representations of the equipment to be installed at the IBR plant. This discussion will explore lessons learned, potential solutions, and success stories for this process including interactions with Original Equipment Manufacturers, mitigating adverse model performance, understanding equipment capabilities, and managing model and capability documentation.
12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Lunch
Location: TBA
1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Solar 2 Roundtable: DC to AC Energy Conversion (Solar + BESS)
Roundtable Chair: Christoper McNalley, Northstar Clean Energy
Location: Century A
1:00 p.m. – 2:45 p.m.
GE Legacy Roundtable
Roundtable Chair: Jon Pohlman, EDF power solutions
Location: Pershing East
1:00 p.m. – 2:45 p.m.
Siemens Legacy Roundtable
Roundtable Chair: Bjorn Hedges, NAES
Location: Pershing West
1:00 p.m. – 2:45 p.m.
Developer Session 3, Roundtable 2: IBR Plant Design Evaluation
Roundtable Chairs: Rajat Majumder, Senior Director Transmission (HVDC), Invenergy & Jason Baptiste, Principal SCADA Engineer, Electrical Engineering, Invenergy
Location: Century B
What is necessary to ensure an IBR plant is designed to comply with applicable requirements and interconnection standards and to conform with other performance and design requirements. How to ensure and evaluate the conformity of the entire plant based on IBR unit and supplemental equipment capability.
2:45 p.m. – 3:15 p.m.
Break
Location: Ballroom Foyer
3:15 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Vestas Legacy Roundtable
Location: Ryan Verrier, Clearlight Energy & Michael Cassidy, EDF Power Solutions
Location: Pershing West
3:15 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Gamesa Roundtable
Roundtable Chair: Shidhar Nath, NextEra Energy & Mike Purcell, Leeward Asset
Location: Pershing East
3:15 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Developer Session 4: Technical Spotlight, IBR Plant Model Verification at Commissioning
Panel Moderator: Julia Matevosyan, Associate Director, Chief Engineer, ESIG
Location: Century B
- NERC Reliability Guideline: Commissioning Best Practices
Jason Baptiste, Principal SCADA Engineer, Electrical Engineering, Invenergy - Utilization of Unified Model Frameworks with Insights from CIGRE Technical Brochure: Guidelines for use of real-code in EMT models for HVDC, FACTs and inverter-based generators in power systems analysis
Alex Shattuck, Director of Grid Transformation, ESIG - Streamlining IBR Model Verification and Parameter Translation Across Platforms
Tom Scaramellino, CEO, GridStrong - IBR Verification
Taylor Hill, Engineering Manager, Advanced Energy
5:30 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Networking Reception
Location: Benton’s Prime
Thursday, April 2 2026
7:00 a.m. – 8:00 a.m.
Breakfast
Location: Pershing North
8:00 a.m. – 12 p.m.
SGRE 3.X+ Roundtable
Roundtable Chair: Kate Leitner, EDF Power Solutions
Location: Century A
8:00 a.m. – 9:45 a.m.
Vestas V – 100+ Roundtable
Roundtable Chair: Hamed Funmilayo, Clearlight Energy
Location: Pershing West
8:00 a.m. – 9:45 a.m.
Developer Session 5, Roundtable 3: Model Verification and Commissioning Testing
Roundtable Chair: Mohamed El Khatib, Director, Grid Modeling and Compliance, Invenergy
Location: TBA
Best practices for verification of IBR Plant parameters compared to the studied representation. Managing grid and weather conditions when determining what tests to perform at commissioning. Obtaining, retaining, and providing to applicable reliability entities evidence of compliance with their requirements.
9:45 a.m. – 10:15 a.m.
Break
Location: Ballroom Foyer
10:15 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Vestas V – 4.X+ Roundtable
Roundtable Chair: Mike Purcell, Leeward Asset Management
Location: Pershing West
10:15 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Developer Session 6, Roundtable 4: IBR Plant Modeling Throughout the Interconnection Process
Roundtable Chair: Reza Pourramezan, Manager, Advanced Grid Innovation Laboratory, NYPA
Location: Century B
Best practices for managing all models associated with an IBR plant throughout the entirety of the interconnection process. Lessons learned, success stories, and open discussion around obtaining models from the respective OEM, ensuring models are up to date, assessing model changes for the potential need to re-study, managing relationships with OEM, EPC, and other consultants, and ensuring the modeled representation of the IBR plant complies with all mandatory requirements that are applicable.
12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Lunch
Location: Pershing North
1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
GE 2.X+ Roundtable
Roundtable Chair: Shridhar Nath, NextEra & Eric Robinson, Consumers Energy
Location: Century A
1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Energy Storage / BESS Roundtable
Roundtable Chair: Christoper McNalley, Northstar Clean Energy
Location: Pershing West
1:00 p.m. – 2:45 p.m.
Developer Session 7, Roundtable 5: NERC and Other Standards/Requirements
Roundtable Chair: Ryan Quint, CEO, Elevate Energy Consulting
Location: Century B
Best practices and lessons learned when determining which requirements are applicable for a particular project, who the applicable entities are and what requirements they are responsible for, management of change and documentation, managing relationships with involved stakeholders, and tools and automation methods that can help
2:45 p.m. – 3:15 p.m.
Break
Location: Ballroom Foyer
3:15 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Developer Session 8, Roundtable 6: Post-Commissioning
Roundtable Chair: Rishi Maharaj, Engineering Manager, ENGIE (Canada)
Location: Century B
Best practices for maintaining compliance with applicable standards and conformance with performance requirements throughout the post-commissioning lifecycle of the IBR plant. This discussion will include discussions on managing firmware updates and hardware upgrades and event monitoring, analysis and model validation, utilizing event data
