CEO Gordon van Welie reflects on ISO-NE tenure in series of public talks

As a young engineer in South Africa, Gordon van Welie was intrigued by the challenges of making power grids work better. That early fascination continued to guide him throughout his career, including for the last 25 years as president and CEO of ISO New England.

Retiring at the end of 2025, van Welie is the longest-serving head of any independent system operator. As he wraps up his tenure, van Welie has been speaking at events around the region, sharing his reflections on the evolution of the region’s bulk power system. During the week of Dec. 1 alone, van Welie spoke at three Boston events: the New England Energy Summit and quarterly meetings of the Consumer Liaison Group and the New England Electricity Restructuring Roundtable.

Regarding grid operations, van Welie said the ISO has become a leader in enhancing situational awareness to maintain reliability. In particular he touted the ISO’s Regional Energy Shortfall Threshold, which he said could be a model that other regions could use to assess and manage shortfall risks.

The wholesale electricity markets, he said, have attracted tens of billions of dollars in private investment, shielded consumers from the risks of bad investments, and encouraged a shift to more-efficient, less polluting resources. Looking ahead, he discussed objectives of the ongoing Capacity Auction Reforms key project.

The ISO’s transmission planning process, he said, has ensured a reliable grid and recently resulted in a “breakthrough”: the region’s first request for proposals to relieve a transmission bottleneck between Maine and the rest of New England.

At the summit, co-hosted by the New England Power Generators Association and the Dupont Group, van Welie took part in a “fireside chat” with former Calpine Energy Solutions CEO Thad Hill. Asked by Hill about “the best of times,” van Welie described “working with a dedicated and brilliant team at the ISO and a committed, energetic and equally smart group of state representatives and market participants to solve some very hard problems and translate abstract market theory and policy directives into practice.”