Speaker Biographies
Sharon Darwin - Southern Company
Sharon Darwin currently works in the Bulk Power Operations organization of Southern Company as the Senior Engineer of Training. In this role, Sharon leads the effort to get new operators RC certified, maintains records for the training organization, and brings her knowledge from her previous roles into operator training.
Those previous roles include serving as the Southern Company Transmission Outage Coordinator; setting the Southern Company Total Transfer Capability limits for the daily market; serving as the support engineer for the Southeastern Reliability Coordinator and working in the field as a Protection and Control engineer. Sharon has held a NERC certified system operator certification since 2017.
Sharon and her daughter, Charlie, live with their two Labradors in Birmingham, Alabama. She serves on the Board of Directors for a local special needs camp for children. In her spare time, she likes to foster dogs for a local animal shelter and binge-watch Survivor.
Dr. Robin Podmore – IncSys
Dr. Podmore has dedicated his 50-year power industry career to development of computer applications for power system operations with a focus on Operator Training Simulators and Digital Twins.
IncSys with its partner PowerData has grown to be the premier independent supplier of Digital Twins worldwide. IncSys and PowerData have the reputation of being called in to help train the operators of the world’s most challenging power systems. Dr. Podmore has been certified as a NERC Transmission and Balancing Operator and a Reliability Coordinator. The IncSys Academy and the Power4Vets program, which Dr. Podmore founded in 2010, have now placed or promoted over 400 veterans as system operators. He is the primary author for over 55 hours of NERC- approved online tutorials and simulator-based exercises. He is currently focused on updating the simulations and content for the IncSys Academy in order to maintain a 90% pass rate for NERC Certification. www.incsys.com.
As an IEEE Smart Village co-founder and volunteer and Rotarian, Dr. Podmore has helped 20-plus entrepreneurs improve living standards in villages with productive applications of renewable electricity across twelve developing countries. https://smartvillage.ieee.org/.
Dr. Podmore is an IEEE Life Fellow, a Member of the National Academy of Engineers, and a Registered Professional Engineer in the State of California. He enjoys using mechanical analogies to explain complex power system phenomena.
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