Ziad Alaywan is 25-year industry veteran. For over 10 years Mr Alaywan was the Managing Director at the CAISO and led the implementation efforts that started the CAISO.
Elected as one of two western representatives to the North American Electricity Reliability Corporation (NERC) Operating Committee, in addition to serving on many Western Electricity Coordinating Council (“WECC”) operations, planning, and market committees.
Mr. Alaywan has lectured in the areas of electric market design and operations, privatization and deregulation at the University of Paris I, Pantheon-Sorbonne, University of Toulouse, École d'Ingénieurs de Purpan,, Stanford University, UC Berkeley, and other higher education institutions.. He serves as a Technical Advisor to the European union on deregulation. He is one of the two founders of the Tres Amigas Superstation project. A project that will enable power flow across all three interconnections in North America.
Mr. Alaywan holds a Bachelors and a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering from Montana State University. In 2002, he completed the Executive Management Program at the Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley. Mr. Alaywan has written over fifty publications on a variety of academic subjects including high voltage AC power systems, grid operations, market design and operations, firm transmission rights auctions, and power system economics and is a certified Professional Engineer in the State of California and also a Senior IEEE member.
Mr. Alaywan continue to provide numerous testimonies before FERC, the California State Legislature, the California State Senate, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission The Council of European Energy Regulators (CEER) and the European Regulators' Group for Electricity and Gas (ERGEG).
Ziad Alaywan is the founder and CEO of ZGlobal Inc. (“ZGlobal”), an Engineering and Energy Consultant firm headquarters in Folsom, California. ZGlobal, established in 2005, specializes in energy infrastructure developments, assets management and electricity markets.
In 1996, Mr. Alaywan accepted an interim Independent System Operator (“CAISO”) Staff position as one of the first two employees of the CAISO and was instrumental in the start-up efforts of the CAISO. During the CAISO start-up, Mr. Alaywan managed a $150 million development budget and successfully obtained WECC Balancing Authority certification.
Subsequently, He assumed the responsibility of the Director and Managing Director of Engineering and Operations at the CAISO with responsibility for all grid operator plans for the operation of the transmission system under the control of the CAISO. After the California Energy Crisis, he assumed the role of Managing Director of Market Operations, where he was responsible for the initiation of the re-design of the CAISO markets, while in charge of operating the CAISO markets. This re-design included the energy and ancillary services markets, the congestion management, reliability must run scheduling, real-time and forward markets, including settlements, billing, and metering functions that ultimately led to the implementation of the LMP markets.
Prior to joining the CAISO, Mr. Alaywan joined the Pacific Gas & Electric Company (“PG&E”) in 1986, as a Transmission Planner and subsequently a Senior Operation Engineer and a member of the 7x24 operation staff. He served as a Transmission and Generation Dispatcher, as well as Manager of Real Time Operations of the PG&E Control Area. During this time Mr. Alaywan was responsible for managing PG&E’s real time grid operations for Northern and Central California transmission and generation assets.