People

The strength of any consultancy business lies in its personnel.

The key professional staff of PPA are experts in the energy field and they all have between ten and thirty years of experience. Their technical and economic analytical skills are complemented by their extensive experience within the international energy sector. PPA staff have worked on energy projects in over 60 countries around the world, including all the major regions. Their international experience covers projects financed by virtually all the leading international development agencies. Brief bio-data, key qualifications and experience of the senior staff of PPA are presented below.

Neil Pinto - Managing Director

Neil is Managing Director of Power Planning Associates and has more than 25 years international experience of advising participants in the electricity sector, with particular emphasis on studies associated with future developments. He graduated from Cambridge University in 1976 and has Master of Arts degree. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical Engineers. He is a skilled and proven Project Manager of multidisciplinary teams. His experience in this area covers studies into the feasibility of power projects, the restructuring and regulation of power utilities, and assessments of tariff structures and levels. He has also been responsible for teams responsible for the implementation of power projects.

Neil has held a number of senior managerial positions in major international consultancy companies before becoming a founding director of Power Planning Associates. He has worked as a consultant for both bilateral and multilateral lending agencies, including the World Bank.

Neil has undertaken a very wide range of studies and projects in the electricity sector internationally, with particular emphasis on work in developing countries. He is an acknowledged communicator and has lectured at a number of courses on electricity planning both in-company and within a university context. He jointly developed a methodology for the valuation of gas for power generation, following which he co-authored the World Bank Technical Paper on the subject.

Contact neil.pinto@powerplanning.com

Peter Beard

Peter Beard is a power sector specialist with extensive international experience in the development of electricity utilities. His core skills are in power sector reform, the evaluation of electricity projects, electricity pricing and tariff analysis. Peter is a founder director of Power Planning Associates. Previously he worked with major international power consultants and a large UK manufacturer. He is a Chartered Electrical Engineer and has a diploma in accounting and finance.

Peter has led many major assignments covering electricity development strategies and electricity market reform and has worked in over 35 countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. He has strong analytical skills in power sector development and investment appraisal.

He has also carried out assignments directly for the World Bank and other international development agencies on energy sector development projects in Africa, Asia and the Pacific.

Contact peter.beard@powerplanning.com

Jonathan Hedgecock

Jonathan Hedgecock is a Director of Power Planning Associates Ltd and an experienced electricity sector consultant, specialising in power system development and electricity market design/implementation. He has worked in power sector consultancy for the past 17 years, initially focusing on transmission and distribution system planning and analysis. This involved him in numerous assignments in the international electricity sector, undertaking least cost network development studies and power system simulation projects for public and private sector clients. With the start of electricity sector privatisation and deregulation in the UK in the early 1990s, Jonathan worked increasingly with IPP developers on the evaluation of opportunities for connecting new power plants to the transmission and distribution networks. During this time he led a team of engineers and economists responsible for providing advice to lenders and owners of IPPs on the technical analysis and contract negotiations required to achieve financial close.

Building on this experience, Jonathan has worked in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Far East on a wide range of electricity restructuring assignments. He is a specialist in network pricing and regulation, and has developed transmission pricing methodologies for the Brazilian electricity market and the Southern African Power Pool. He has also led teams responsible for developing grid and distribution codes and procedures. He has an in-depth understanding of the business processes and technology required to support system and market operation, and has worked on the development of rules and system specifications for system operators and electricity markets in Brazil, South Korea, Bosnia & Herzegovina and South Africa.

A skilled communicator, Jonathan specialises in building strong client relationships at all levels, fostering strong collaboration between the consultants’ and client’s project teams to ensure successful project delivery.

Contact jonathan.hedgecock@powerplanning.com

Don Webster

Don Webster is a Director of Power Planning Associates. He is a Chartered Engineer and has worked in the power sector for around 25 years. The earlier part of his career was involved with the design of hydropower schemes, but since completing an MBA in the late-1980s he has been almost exclusively involved with providing economic, financial and strategic advice to power utilities and private power entities. Don is an extremely capable computer modeller and has developed numerous bespoke economic and financial models, both for assistance with investment decision-making and for the projection of financial performance.

In recent years he has taken a prominent role on expansion planning or tariff studies in Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Vietnam, Tanzania, India, Guyana, St Lucia, Dominica, and the Bahamas. He has also recently worked on World Bank-funded assignments in Ghana and Sierra Leone, developing financial projections models for the electricity utilities. In Ghana, he assisted the World Bank with financial modelling relating to the rescheduling of ECG and VRA’s debts and the funding of new investments.

In 2004/2005, Don undertook the economic and financial analysis of the 50 MW Bumbuna Hydropower Project in Sierra Leone, under World Bank funding. In addition to least-cost analysis, economic and financial analysis, the assignment included an assessment of the impacts of the project on the macroeconomy of Sierra Leone, and the contribution of the project towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals.

Contact don.webster@powerplanning.com

Graeme Chown

Graeme Chown is a power system operations specialist. His core skills are in ancillary services and real time power control. Graeme joined Power Planning Associates in January 2005. Previously, he worked for 18 years for Eskom, the main power utility in South Africa. He is a registered Professional Electrical Engineer with the Engineering Council of South Africa and has an MSc in Electrical Engineering.

Graeme has led many major projects covering coal-fired power station control systems design, commissioning and optimisation. Automatic Generation Control systems specification and design, including the design of a fuzzy logic controller. Frequency control redesign of Southern African Power Pool. Ancillary services markets design for the Eskom Power Pool, including costing, technical performance monitoring and certification procedures.

Graeme has worked on the development of rules and system specifications for system operators and ancillary service markets in South Africa and Southern Africa. Graeme has written many papers for the IEEE, SAIEE and other journals on the topics of ancillary services and frequency control.

Contact graeme.chown@powerplanning.com

Sarah Carter

Sarah Carter has worked in power consultancy for the past 15 years and has gained extensive experience in power system studies to analyse transmission, distribution and industrial power systems. She has undertaken a range of studies from transmission planning, distribution system loss reduction, harmonic analysis, reliability analysis and load flow, fault level and transient stability studies. She also has considerable experience in technical investigations and studies of the London Underground Power System and was involved with drafting the Performance Specification.

Contact sarah.carter@powerplanning.com

Craig Lucas

PPA was pleased to welcome Craig Lucas as Director of Marketing. Craig has worked in the rail, electricity and telecommunications sectors in a range of business development, engineering and senior management roles.

He commenced his career in the rail industry, specializing in electrification, subsequently moving to a variety of management positions in a multinational energy utility including working in the areas of network planning and asset management, with responsibility for design and network planning, research and development, and subsequently business development of unregulated business opportunities.

In addition, he set up and ran the engineering and operations division of a telecommunications company. He spent two years living and working in Latin America and speaks fluent Portuguese. He is a UK chartered engineer, and has spoken and presented conference papers on a range of energy sector topics.

Contact craig.lucas@powerplanning.com

Claire Wilkinson

Claire is a Graduate Engineer, having obtained an MEng degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Imperial College London (2007). During her University career Claire was awarded the Cadzow-Smith Engineering Award and the AMEC Shaping the future Award, and was a finalist in the npower energy challenge, ”Keeping the Lights On“ in April 2007 at the Wembley Stadium. Claire promoted Engineering to young people through various schemes at Imperial College.

At PPA Claire provides support on the analysis of generation, transmission and distribution projects and systems for utilities, industrial companies and regulators internationally. As part of a recent project on minimum standards of quality of service and reliability of supply, Claire took part in an international workshop in Johannesburg, presenting results to the client.

Contact claire.wilkinson@powerplanning.com

Cliff Walton

We welcome Cliff to the new PPA Energy team. Most recently he has been Technical Director of Cre8 Energy Ltd. Cliff is a senior utility manager and an acknowledged international expert in the management of power network assets, particularly in the optimisation of performance of ageing network assets. Previously Head of Strategic Development for EDF Energy Networks, he has extensive experience in engineering, innovation, commercial, financial, business process and technology change activities. He has had a wide range of roles and responsibilities in both power and telecommunications. He was a founding Patron of the Institute of Asset Management and is Past Chair of the IEEE UK & RI Power Engineering Society.

In addition, he has worked and consulted around the world on issues relating to power distribution networks. He has also been involved in the development of a wide range of business cases for the commercial exploitation of utility assets (regulated and unregulated) including acquisition and operation of private networks.

Cliff is a Chartered Engineer, Fellow of IET, Senior member of IEEE, member of the Institute of Asset Management, and a Visiting Professor at, Imperial College London. He is an authority on asset ageing and condition monitoring in power distribution networks, and has a wide range of research interests in development of technologies relating to renewable generation, smart networks and sustainability.

Contact cliff@ppaenergy.co.uk

Tony Woods

We welcome Tony to the new PPA Energy team. Most recently he has been Commercial Director of Cre8 Energy. Tony is a professional management accountant who has spent his working life dealing with commercial aspects of the electricity industry - with extensive experience of UK practice in the management of electricity networks and the energy sector generally. He is a former Finance Director for a UK distribution business - having previously held a wide range of senior commercial and financial posts in a large utility. During this time he led a team charged with implementing the separation of distribution and supply businesses and was involved in asset valuation in the purchase of Eastern Electricity and SEEBOARD networks businesses. He has a wide range of practical knowledge of pricing policy, formulation of use of system charges, associated billing and data-gathering issues, and commercial and contractual relationships. He also has extensive experience of the development of incentive strategies for driving cost reductions with power distribution assets.

He brings specific expertise in the issues surrounding price formulation for power systems, and also in designing and implementing commercial change programmes for loss reduction, management of billing and commercial data gathering and settlement in electricity markets.

Tony is a visiting professor at Imperial College, London, and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants. He has also been elected as a non executive director of Electralink Ltd - the Company which provides the data transfer network to the competitive electricity supply market in the UK and a range of other data management related and governance services.

Contact tony@ppaenergy.co.uk