Curtis Kirkeby is a fellow electrical engineer of technology strategy at Avista Utilities Inc. He has 38 years of utility industry experience and is responsible for applied smart grid research and development (R&D). He currently is the principal investigator for numerous grid projects involving energy storage, solar, building management systems, and customer-side distributed energy resources. Kirkeby also is responsible for design thinking applied within the innovation station at Avista. R&D efforts include opportunities for electrification, sensors of many types, distributed energy resource management and smart city solutions. He has a master’s degree in engineering and industrial management from Washington State University and a BSEE degree in power systems from Montana State University. He is a registered professional engineer in the state of Washington.