Transformer Technology Tech Talks – Keith Redfearn, Camlin Energy

The grid was designed for one-way power flow: generation at the top, consumption at the bottom. FERC Order 2222 just blew that model apart, and most of the industry still doesn’t understand what it means for reliability.

Alan Ross sits down with Keith Redfearn, the newly appointed CEO of Camlin Americas, at a moment when the grid’s physics are colliding with its policy mandates. A veteran of GE and Oracle who spent 25+ years deploying ADMS systems, Redfearn explains why the very technologies that enable decarbonization are also the ones threatening to destabilize the grid, and what utilities, vendors, and regulators must do about it.

Key takeaways from the conversation:

• The distinction between reliability (assets working as designed) and resiliency (how fast you recover after failure) and why both are under simultaneous pressure
• How digital protection relays with multiple-setting capability are replacing single-setting electromechanical devices to handle reverse power flows from DER
• Why FERC Order 2222 lowering the participation threshold to 100 kilowatts is a double-edged sword: more decarbonization, exponentially more grid complexity
• The critical missing piece in most microgrid conversations: storage. Without batteries, flywheels, or pumped storage, transient wind and solar generation cannot sustain a microgrid
• How black start restoration changes when a community operates as a microgrid, bringing small pockets back online without waiting for transmission infrastructure
• The shift from reactive to semi-autonomous grid control: within five to ten years, control systems will make real-time decisions, with human operators handling only exception cases
• Where machine learning actually fits in grid operations today: still nascent at scale, but increasingly used for phase detection, smart meter deployment, and field resource optimization
• Why utilities are hiring data scientists faster than electrical engineers, and what that signals about the grid’s future

Guest: Keith Redfearn, CEO, Camlin Americas
Host: Alan Ross, Managing Editor, APC Media