Projects of the Year, CEOs of the Year and Utility of the Year Winners were recognized and presented with their awards at the DistribuTECH Awards Dinner held last night in Orlando.
ORLANDO, Fla., Feb. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The editors of POWERGRID International magazine, the official publication of DistribuTECH Conference & Exhibition, revealed the winners of the magazine's 2016 Projects of the Year awards Monday evening at the annual DistribuTECH Awards Dinner, kicking off the electric power industry's largest annual transmission and distribution show in North America, DistribuTECH Conference & Exhibition.
In addition, Electric Light & Power magazine, the official publication of the Electric Light & Power Executive Conference, closed out its annual conference by honoring its 2015 Utility of the Year and CEOs of the Year at the dinner.
The magazines' Editor in Chief Teresa Hansen presented the awards.
"This awards banquet is always so much fun and every year it gets better," Hansen said. "I'm honored to be able to present these awards to the best of the best among North American utilities."
Winners of the 2016 Projects of the Year awards were announced first. PPL Electric Utilities won in the Customer Engagement category for its Universal Outage Alerts. Duke Energy Ohio's HōM Energy Manager won in the Demand Response/Energy Efficiency category. The Renewable Grid Integration Project of the Year award winner was Hawaiian Electric Co. for its rollout of In-Line Power Regulators to handle challenges in circuits with large amounts of high solar photovoltaic. CenterPoint Energy was awarded the Grid Optimization Project of the Year for its Advanced Metering and Intelligent Grid Initiative.
Electric Light & Power magazine's Utility of the Year and CEOs of the Year were selected and announced a few weeks before the awards dinner, but also were recognized during the event. Terry Bassham, chairman, president and CEO of Kansas City Power & Light (KCP&L) and its holding company, Great Plains Energy, was honored as the Large Utility CEO of the Year, which is given to leaders of utilities with more than 400,000 customers. Robert Grimm, president and CEO of Alaska Power & Telephone (AP&T) was honored as the Small Utility CEO of the Year, an honor presented to the top executive of utilities with 400,000 customers or fewer. Both gentlemen were present to receive their awards.
Mr. Bassham began his career with KCP&L in 2005 as the company's chief financial officer and became KCP&L's CEO in 2012. Mr. Grimm has been with AP&T for more than 45 years and became the utility's CEO in 1989. He recently announced his plans to retire later this year.
Newark, New Jersey-based Public Service Electric & Gas was selected late last year as Electric Light & Power's Utility of the Year, an honor the magazine has been bestowing on North American utilities for more than 25 years. PSE&G had a pivotal year in terms of infrastructure improvement in 2015, was ranked "Highest in Business Customer Satisfaction among Gas Utilities and Large Electric Utilities in the East" by to J.D. Power and was recognized as first in electric reliability in the Mid-Atlantic region by PA Consulting for the 14th year in a row.
PSE&G was featured in Electric Light & Power's November-December 2015 issue. Mr. Bassham and Mr. Grimm will be featured in the soon to be published January-February issue. An article about the winning projects will appear in the March edition of POWERGRID International magazine.
For more information on POWERGRID International magazine, Electric Light & Power magazine, DistribuTECH Conference & Exhibition, and the Electric Light & Power Executive Conference, visit www.power-grid.com, www.elp.com, www.distributech.com and www.elpconference.com.
About PennWell
PennWell, the Tulsa, Oklahoma-based parent company of Electric Light & Power (www.elp.com) and POWERGRID International (www.power-grid.com) magazines as well as DistribuTECH Conference and Exhibition, has been known for providing comprehensive coverage of several strategic markets since 1910. Today PennWell Corp. is a highly diversified, business-to-business media and information company with 320 profit centers, including 130 print and online magazines and newsletters, 60 conferences and exhibitions on six continents, and an extensive offering of books, maps, websites, research products, digital media and database services.
Contact:
Teresa Hansen
Editor in Chief
[email protected]
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SOURCE PennWell Corporation
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