The MnSEIA Solar Advocacy Award goes to Laura Hannah for driving strong and influential solar policy over the last year.
Laura was the chief advocate in the lead to transition to new interconnection standards. She helped develop and implement the new MNDIP process, as well as other supporting documentation. Her foray into revising the old interconnection standards document also laid the groundwork to relook at the Distributed Generation Tariff, which stands to increase solar throughout the state for systems between 1-10 MW in size. Most importantly, Laura is a frequent contributor to the CERTs Video contest with those very cute videos of future solar advocates!
Laura is the Wind and Solar Program Manager at Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO). Laura came to MISO from Fresh Energy, where she served as senior policy associate on the energy markets team. In that role, she led Fresh Energy’s work on policies to integrate increasing amounts of clean energy on the grid by improving the way distributed energy resources are connected and valued. Her wide range of experience – including work with SolarCity, Pacific Gas and Electric, and Google X – provides valuable lessons on how to effectively create change within a complex energy landscape. Laura holds a BS in Natural Sciences with an emphasis in Physics and a minor in Mathematics from the University of Puget Sound.