Chad Abbey, PhD, Senior Director, Grid Architecture, is an international expert with over eighteen years of industry experience in grid modernization, utility operations, and renewable-energy and energy-storage integration. He has helped utilities and developers navigate the distributed generation (DG) interconnection process, deploy innovative solutions to accelerate and reduce the cost of DG interconnection, and integrate distributed energy resources (DER) into distribution system operations. These projects have included design, specification, and subsequent deployment of distributed energy resource management systems (DERMS) and advanced laboratory testing using real-time simulation of emerging distribution architectures and technologies, including high-penetration DER control, OpenFMB, microgrids, and hierarchical control architectures. Chad has extensive experience with power systems analysis tools such as CYMDIST, Synergi, OpenDSS, EMTP-RV, and OPAL-RT. He has worked on augmenting these commercial tools through integration with Python and historical data for advanced distribution planning, including data analytics and probabilistic planning methods.