Will McNamara

Principal Investigator
Sandia National Laboratories

Will McNamara is the Principal Investigator for the  Long Duration Energy Storage (LDES) National Consortium, representing Sandia National Laboratories as the lead lab for this effort. He also leads the Policy & Regulations Tiger Team for the National Consortium.

Will serves as Grid Energy Storage Policy Analyst for Sandia National Laboratories with a focus on energy storage policy development at the federal and state levels. Will has spent his entire 30-year career in the energy and utilities industry with a concentration on regulatory and legislative policy. He has served as a lobbyist in California and has represented major utilities across the U.S. in numerous jurisdictions in proceedings pertaining to integrated resource planning, procurement, cost recovery, rate design, and the development of policymaking best practices. Will’s areas of subject matter expertise, in addition to LDES policy, include distributed energy resources, AMI/smart grid, renewables, and competitive retail markets.

Kailey Fascitelli

Business Development Partner
Sandia National Laboratories

The Business Development Partner will aid in recruiting and communicating with Teaming Partners; lead the production of accessible communication materials; support outreach events; and lead the Stakeholder Engagement Group.  

Since 2018, Kailey Fascitelli, Technical Business Development Specialist, has been partnering with Sandia National Laboratories’ Grid Modernization and Energy Storage Program leadership to create and implement strategic plans, manage winning proposal submissions, and develop customer relationships through marketing/messaging and event coordination. In her role, she partners with management and technical staff to lead the development of strategies that identify high priority program development opportunities and drive internal investment decisions. Kailey manages the creation and submission of competitive proposals to key sponsors, having submitted 300+ proposals to date. In addition, she leads efforts to facilitate customer and partner engagements through site visits, conference organization, discovery and outreach, and development of outreach materials. Kailey holds a B.S. in Population Health and Psychology and an M.B.A. with concentrations in Strategic Management/Policy and Human Resources/Organizational Behavior, both from the University of New Mexico.

Patrick Balducci

Argonne National Laboratories (ANL)

Patrick Balducci is the Manager of the Power Systems and Markets Research Group in the Center for Energy, Environmental, and Economic Systems Analysis at Argonne National Laboratory. At Argonne, he also serves as the Lab Relationship Manager over the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Renewable Power Programs and the DOE Office of Electricity Energy Storage Program. Prior to joining Argonne, Patrick served as a Chief Economist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) where he served for nearly 20 years. At PNNL, he led the energy storage analytics team where his research focused on storage valuation, integration, performance characterization, and control systems. Mr. Balducci has led research efforts evaluating the benefits of energy storage at 19 sites across the U.S. with combined power and energy capacities of 3.4 GW and 51 GWh, respectively, and leads efforts to enhance economic assessment tools for DOE. He holds a BS in Economics from Lewis and Clark College, where he graduated with honors, and an MSc in Applied Environmental Economics from the University of London, Imperial College of London.

Hope Corsair

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)

Dr. Hope J. Corsair is a Grid Energy Economist in the Electrification & Energy Infrastructure Division at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. She specializes in cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary work at the technical, social, economic, and environmental nexus of our rapidly changing energy landscape. Her work focuses on electric grid resilience, hydroelectric power-grid interaction, and community-scale energy solutions. Energy justice is a cornerstone of her work. Prior to joining ORNL, Dr. Corsair was a faculty member in Electrical Engineering & Renewable Energy at the Oregon Institute of Technology, and worked in resource planning and energy systems modeling in the electric power industry. She earned her PhD from Johns Hopkins University.

Torrey  Lyons

Idaho National Laboratories (INL)

Torrey Lyons is a social scientist focusing on how transportation and energy decisions affect people, the environment, and economies. He is a research scientist in the Mobility Analytics group at the Idaho National Laboratory. He recently completed a detail to the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation where he worked on equity and tribal engagement. Dr. Lyons has published articles on transportation outcomes associated with compact development, improvements to travel demand modeling, and the economic effects of transit service, among other topics. He has taught research methods for urban planners, land use and transportation planning, program and policy evaluation, and urban economics in the US and abroad. Prior to joining the Idaho National Laboratory and the Joint Office, Dr. Lyons worked in consulting and academia.

Zhiwen Ma

National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)

Dr. Zhiwen Ma is a senior engineer in the Thermal Sciences R&D Group at National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology (2000) and a M.S.M.E. degree from the University of Akron (1996).  He was Test and Modeling Engineer at FuelCell Energy for six years since 2001 and worked at General Electric (GE) Aviation before joining NREL in 2009.  His research focuses on particle thermal energy storage (TES), hydrogen production, and concentrating solar thermal power. Zhiwen is leading the research projects on long duration energy storage (LDES) using particle-based thermal energy storage, thermal and electrochemical modeling for electrolysis technology development, and solar fuel production. His research works on energy storage, solar receiver, advanced supercritical carbon dioxide power cycle, thermal and electrochemical modeling have been applied in Generation 3 concentrating solar power, solar fuel and hydrogen production. He has expertise in modeling and testing of particle TES, renewable solution and system development, component performance and cost analysis. He served as an associated editor for Frontier in Energy Research, has published over 80 papers, numerous technical reports, two book chapters, and was awarded fourteen patents.

Jeremy Twitchell

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)

Jeremy Twitchell is a senior energy analyst at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, where he leads PNNL’s work on the Equitable Regulatory Environment thrust area of the Department of Energy – Office of Electricity’s Energy Storage Program. His research focuses on identifying the regulatory barriers that impede the deployment of energy storage technologies and best practices for reducing or eliminating those barriers, as well as providing technical assistance to states on energy storage-related topics. He also supports other efforts at the lab in areas related to grid planning, utility regulation, rate design, and energy system equity. Prior to joining PNNL, Jeremy spent five years at the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission.