Mr. Austria is a founder of Pterra, LLC.  He has over 39 years’ experience in electric power transmission planning, operations, voltage simulation and analysis, design and engineering, and brings this knowledge to help clients worldwide in the power industry.

He is a renowned expert in the specialized fields of system reliability, transmission and distribution planning, integration of new technologies and system analysis.  He has provided expert testimony in these areas in filings with the FERC, state and local public commissions.  He has led and conducted transmission studies in all US interconnections and over 25 national networks worldwide; each of which have determined major investment in transmission, substations, underground and undersea cables, power conditioning equipment, distribution facilities and application of new analytical methodologies and technologies.  Mr. Austria has spoken at numerous conferences, authored articles and participated in working groups on the subject of electric power transmission.

Mr. Austria was formerly Vice President of Consulting at Power Technologies, Inc. (Schenectady, New York), Vice President of transmission studies at EPRI Solutions, Inc. and Senior Specialist at the National Power Corporation.  In these various roles, he was responsible for developing new approaches to providing for reliability in competitive power industry environments.

Mr. Austria is a senior member of the IEEE and its Power Engineering Society and past chair of the Schenectady Section.

Areas of focus. Transmission/distribution planning; integration of new technologies; voltage control and reactive power planning and design; power system analysis; power system stability; power system reliability; operations planning; software development; planning and operations training; energy markets.