Keith O'Neal

Keith O’Neal is a Principal Consultant in the Nexant Grid Management group based in San Francisco. He has more than thirty years of experience in the electric utility industry, five of those years working with Nexant clients on utility NERC CIP and O&P reliability standard compliance and other utility regulatory issues.

Prior to working with Nexant, Keith was Director of the Division of Reliability Standards and Security at FERC for nearly eight years, helping the industry and regulators transition to mandatory reliability standards. He was responsible for evaluating and advising the Commission on every reliability standard proposed for implementation by NERC and for evaluating utility compliance with the CIP standards in his FERC role. Keith has a thorough understanding of what is or is not compliant with the standards and the elements that comprise a workable internal compliance program that will meet NERC and Regional Entity compliance monitoring requirements.

Keith has had great success in recommending efficient, effective, and sustainable compliance monitoring programs to clients and has been instrumental in representing utilities and other stakeholders in deliberations with regulatory agencies on many key issues, with his significant experience working with FERC and state utility commissions. With regard to utility competitive markets, he has experience in wide stakeholder negotiations for implementation of RTO/ISOs in the Northeast and knowledge of CAISO market rules and operation.