Michael Legatt

Michael E. Legatt

CEO and Founder

Michael E. Legatt is the CEO and founder of ResilientGrid, Inc., whose mission is to grow resilient infrastructures by optimizing the human side of the infrastructure management, including situational awareness, decision making support and collaboration tools in normal and emergency operations, and in fostering the kinds of organizational culture (high reliability, just culture) that empower humans to work more efficiently and effectively, lowering human error rates. Dr. Legatt has been a programmer for over 20 years, and worked in the energy, financial, medical, neuroscience research and educational sectors. He has M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Clinical Health Psychology/Neuropsychology from the Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology/Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and M.S.E. and Ph.D. degrees in Energy Systems Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, and is a Certified Performance Technologist.

As an amateur (ham) radio operator, he received a commendation for helping to provide emergency communications during the 2003 blackout in the northeastern United States, which sparked his interest in the psychology of energy management. He works to build systems designed to provide operators with needed information, optimizing for perception, speed, comprehension, and stress management. He also works at the organizational level to support the growth of the industry’s high reliability culture.  Prior to founding ResilientGrid, Michael spent ten years as the principal human factors engineer for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which manages the flow of electricity to over 24 million Texas customers, about 90% of Texas’ load. There, his development of the Macomber Map® has been featured in the New York Times, National Public Radio, T&D World, and Forbes. The Macomber Map has helped ERCOT operators for over nine years, and Southwest Power Pool operators for over two years to maintain situational awareness in a variety of grid conditions, in training, simulations, and real-time operations, including region’s top records of wind integration (52% SPP, 48% ERCOT). He also works on the behavioral aspects of consumer electric use, researching electric vehicle to grid integration, behavioral aspects of conservation and consumer awareness in grid management, and the cybersecurity, behavioral, and reliability issues that arise with integration of new technologies across layers of the grid. He was the principal investigator on a collaborative research project between ERCOT, University of Texas at Austin, EV-TEC and Pecan Street Project, studying the integration of electric vehicle charging and driver behavioral patterns with the bulk electric system. This research project studied the viability of EVs to intelligently charge in a distributed fashion and provide ancillary services, enhancing grid stability and resiliency.

Sessions

April 6, 2018
BIG-02: Human-Centered Design in Smart Cities
Room 105
11:45  -  12:30