About George C. Loehr

George C. Loehr received a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering degree from Manhattan College in 1962, and a Master of Arts in English Literature from New York University in 1964. He began his engineering career in transmission planning with the Consolidated Edison Company of New York in 1962, and completed the GE Power Systems Engineering Course in 1965. Following the 1965 Northeast Blackout, he was actively involved in a wide range of follow-up activities, and chaired the committee which completed a computer simulation of the event – the first such successful simulation of a wide-spread power failure in North America.

Loehr joined the New York Power Authority as Chief Planning Engineer in 1969, and the Northeast Power Coordinating Council (NPCC) in 1972. He was very active in regional, national and North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) activities, serving on numerous committees, subcommittees and task forces. He was named Executive Director of NPCC in 1989, and remained in that position until his retirement in 1997.

Now self-employed, Mr. Loehr does management consulting, appears as an expert witness, writes, and teaches a variety of courses on power systems to non-technical professionals. His clients have included organizations throughout the U.S., Canada and China. He has served as Vice President and member of the Board of Directors of the American Education Institute (AEI), and is a charter member of Power Engineers Supporting Truth (PEST). Loehr is presently Chair and an Unaffiliated Member of the Executive Committee of the New York State Reliability Council, which works in conjunction with the New York ISO, and previously chaired its Reliability Compliance Monitoring Subcommittee. He also serves as an Outside Director on the Board of Directors of the Georgia System Operations Corporation (GSOC). He is recognized internationally as an expert on electric power system reliability.

Mr. Loehr has given expert testimony in the states of Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, Kentucky, New Mexico, Mississippi, and in Washington DC, and has testified before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. He has done TV interviews with BBC, CNN, WPIX and CBC, and has been a lecturer, keynote speaker, and/or chair at professional conferences all over the U.S. and Canada. In addition, he has done audio tape lectures for various organizations, including the IEEE, “Professional Development Options,” “Red Vector,” and AEI.

Articles by Mr. Loehr have appeared widely in the trade press, including Public Utilities Fortnightly, Electrical World, The Electricity Journal, Electricity Daily, Transmission & Distribution World, Energy Perspective, Restructuring Today, Energy Pulse, Natural Gas & Electricity, EnergyBiz, and the Belgian magazine, Revue E tijdschrift. A recent op-ed piece was published in The New York Times. He is co-editor of and a contributor to the IEEE book, The Evolution of Electric Power Transmission Under Deregulation.

In addition to his engineering career, Mr. Loehr is a published author, has exhibited his art photographs at galleries in the New York metropolitan area, and has done stock photography for a world-wide photo agency. His photographs have appeared in numerous magazines, advertisements, business brochures, and several “coffee table” books, and one of his art photos was used as the original cover for Sandra Brown’s best-selling novel, Fat Tuesday.

He recently published his own first novel, Blackout.