Heather Donaldson

Ms. Donaldson is a Managing Director at Black & Veatch in Management Consulting. She focuses on energy industry transformation primarily related to grid modernization, transportation electrification, and distributed energy resource integration. Her 25 years of experience spans electricity industry domains including transportation electrification, distributed energy resource integration, grid modernization, wholesale markets, and distribution and transmission planning.

She is responsible for developing and delivering Black & Veatch strategy and planning solution offerings for our transportation electrification and DER integration solutions. For the last decade, Ms. Donaldson has been actively engaged in grid modernization. While working for the California ISO, she held the position of Director Smart Grid Technology and Strategy charged with developing roadmaps and strategy to promote grid modernization to benefit the transmission system. While at SCE she held a position in distribution planning responsible for leading company filing for grid modernization. At the California Public Utilities Commission, she acted as the interconnection ombudsman and special advisor on the distribution resource plan, electric vehicle, and interconnection related distribution and operations proceedings. She led several California roadmaps including Energy Storage, Demand Response, and Vehicle-Grid-Integration leading to actions in policy, planning, and grid operations. Her experience spans electricity industry domains including distributed energy resource integration (DR, EE, EV, Energy Storage, microgrids), grid modernization, wholesale markets, and distribution and transmission planning.

Ms. Donaldson is a recognized thought leader serving as a former member and advisor in forums focused on business model and policy changes and enabling technical capabilities. Specifically, Ms. Donaldson served as a member of the DOE EAC appointed by the U.S. Secretary of Energy for two terms from 2014 – 2018. During this period, she served on peer review committees and contributed to several DOE efforts including the DSPx and other outputs of the Grid Modernization Lab Consortium (GMLC). She also served as an advisor for NIST on its Smart Grid Advisory Committee until its dissolution in 2019. In this role, she advised NIST and contributed to interoperability principles and standards. She served on the GridWise Architecture Council (GWAC) to help drive frameworks for interoperability and transactive energy.

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