Technical Committee

Jim McDowall is an IEEE Fellow, cited for leadership in stationary battery standards and the energy storage industry. Currently working as an independent consultant, Jim was with Saft for 45 years, most recently in the position of Senior Technical Advisor. He was a director of the Energy Storage Association (now American Clean Power Association) for 14 years, including two years as Chairman. Jim is a former Chair of the IEEE Energy Storage and Stationary Battery Committee, has led numerous standards projects, and is currently serving as the committee’s Standards Coordinator.

Tom Carpenter provides Governance and Oversight for compliance to NERC/SERC reliability standards at a large electrical utility. He has over 35 years of experience in the electrical power industry and is a Senior Member of the IEEE, including membership in the IEEE Power & Energy Society (PES) and IEEE Standards Association (SA). Tom has a BSEE and is a licensed electrician and licensed professional engineer. He serves as the treasurer of the IEEE Energy Storage & Stationary Battery (ESSB) Committee, is a former Principal Member of the NFPA 70E Technical Committee, and is a certified high and low voltage electrical safety trainer.

Rachel Wood is an Electrical Engineer with nearly 10 years of experience in the stationary battery industry. Her expertise includes design and operation of large data centers as well as commercial/industrial and grid-scale battery energy storage systems. Currently, she is a Project Engineer in Honeywell's BESS Center of Excellence. Since 2020 she has been a member of IEEE PES Energy Storage and Stationary Battery Committee, where she serves as Secretary of the P2962 Lithium-Ion Battery Installation, Operation & Maintenance working group.

Curtis Ashton has 27+ years of experience in the battery/power industry. He has been involved with Battcon for about 2/3 of that time. In addition, he served a term on IEEE RevCom, is the former vice-chair of ATIS-STEP, the former vice-president of the IEEE PELS Intelec Executive Committee (TC7), and is the present IEEE PES ESSB chair. He is also an NFPA member, and has a patent to his name dealing with line-powering of fiber networks. He has been published numerous times in many publications, and has presented at many conferences, along with being a primary author of a few IEEE standards.

John Kim has been in the battery industry for 30 plus years. Currently, John is a Director of Utility Market at EnerSys. He has written numerous papers and presented at many industry-related conferences including Battcon, Doble, Eurobat, Intelec, Infobatt, and IEEE chapter meetings. His battery background includes Engineering (technical support, R&D, project management, and manufacturing), Sales, and Technical Marketing. He is also knowledgeable in battery selection, specification writing, maintenance, and troubleshooting.

Dan Lambert has over 30 years of commercial and industrial electrical experience and has worked with AC and DC power systems since 1983, with a primary focus on mission-critical power systems. Dan has experience in the Electrical industry from the perspectives of an Electrician, Service Technician, Service Manager, Systems Engineer, and Product Manager. Working with stationary battery systems since 1985, he has worked with many battery chemistries and has contributed to large scale energy storage analysis projects, as well as testing other storage systems. Dan is currently a member of the IEEE Power and Energy Society serving as the chairperson for the IEEE Energy Storage and Stationary Battery Committee’s IEEE 1679.4 Alkaline Chemistries Working Group.

William (Bill) Cantor is the Vice President of Technology for TPI. He has earned a BS degree from Pennsylvania State University and an MS degree in Electrical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University. Bill has 26 years of experience in the battery industry. He was inducted into the Battcon Hall of Fame in 2014. Additionally, Mr. Cantor has been the chair of the IEEE 1188 working group since 1995 and is a member of the IEEE ESSB Committee of the Power and Energy Society since 1992. He is also the past Chair of this organization and a member of SCC-18, where he represents IEEE on NFPA 70, NFPA 70B and NFPA 855 technical committees. He is also a Assistant Teaching Professor in the Information Sciences and Technology Department at Pennsylvania State University and is a licensed Professional Engineer (PE).

BATTCON TECHNICAL COMMITTEE MEMBER Mike Nispel has been in the industrial battery field for over 30 years and has worked for major battery manufacturers in varied aspects of battery manufacturing, engineering and marketing. He has experience in lead-acid and lithium batteries as well as the related fields of grid storage, renewables and battery monitoring. He holds a BS and an MS degree in Chemical Engineering and is an active member in the IEEE/PES Battery Standards Committee.

Brian Zimmerman has been with East Penn Manufacturing for 15 years and currently serves as the manager for their engineering technical support group in the Reserve Power division. He has a BS degree in chemical engineering from Pennsylvania State University. He is a member of the Battcon Technical Committee, has participated in the IEEE Stationary Battery Committee and presented at the 7x24 Exchange data center conference.

BATTCON TECHNICAL COMMITTEE MEMBER Jeff Gruseck is an Electrical Engineer, licensed Professional Engineer with >35 years in design, applications, plant engineering, and project management. Broad range of experience with primary focus in electrical power and controls. Currently serving as Program Manager for several NERC Standards, and Fleet Expert and Designated Technical Authority for Stationary Batteries and DC Systems within Duke Energy Generation.

BATTCON TECHNICAL COMMITTEE MEMBER Allen Byrne is a 40-year veteran of the battery-backed power industry. He has worked in all aspects of the field, including DC Power systems, UPS, and batteries. Allen is one of the initiators and founders of Battcon and has acted as co-chair and moderator for 17 years. He has contributed to IEEE, ATIS, BICSI, NFPA and other code and standards setting bodies. Allen has had numerous articles and technical papers published in industry magazines and journals and has presented many times at national and international conferences. For several years, he was a contributing editor for Power Quality Assurance Magazine. He is the original author of the Power Distribution chapter of the Telecommunications Methods Manual published by BICSI. Allen is a Senior Member of the IEEE and is honored to be a member of the Battcon Hall of Fame.