Athindra is a senior associate on RMI’s Carbon-Free Electricity Program, working on industrial decarbonization projects in California and Texas as part of the MPP-RMI Clean Industrial Hubs Initiative. He is also helping design a utility demand management pilot program for Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings (GEBs).

Background

Prior to joining RMI, Athindra was a distribution planning engineer at ComEd, where he was responsible for a region serving 100,000+ customers, conducting capacity planning studies for load growth, DER interconnection, voltage optimization, distribution automation, and N-1 contingency analysis.

During his master’s program at Texas A&M University, Athindra’s work focused on the retail energy space from both the entrepreneurial and research perspectives. He explored the commercial market potential of his research group’s startup on retail electric choice and demand response through the NSF I-Corps Program. His insights from this experience informed his research on utility ratemaking for a high-DER future, developing an alternative rate structure for residential customers based on their impact on the distribution grid.

Education

• MS, Electrical Engineering, Texas A&M University
• BTech, Electrical and Electronics Engineering, SASTRA University, Thanjavur, India