Chairman of the Board
Ziad is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of ZGlobal Inc. His three decades of experience span electric grid and market operations, engineering, and project development. Ziad founded ZGlobal in 2005 to provide energy consulting services that strengthen grid reliability, benefit the environment, and contribute to community and statewide goals.
A licensed Professional Engineer, Ziad has held numerous leadership and operational roles throughout his career, including at the California Independent System Operator (CAISO), where he was instrumental in implementing the first wholesale electricity market in the western United States. As one of CAISO’s first staff members, Ziad helped obtain FERC, NERC, WECC, and state certifications, managed a $150 million development budget, and successfully launched CAISO operations in less than two years.
Following CAISO’s successful start-up in 1998, Ziad assumed multiple leadership roles, including Director of Engineering and Managing Director of Market Operations. His responsibilities included oversight of grid operator plans for the transmission system and the operation of CAISO markets. In addition, Ziad spent ten years at Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E), holding positions including Transmission Planner, Senior Operations Engineer, Transmission and Generation Dispatcher, and Control Area Operator. His work included managing real-time operations of the PG&E control area, encompassing all PG&E hydroelectric and other generating facilities, as well as PG&E 500 kV and 230 kV bulk transmission systems serving approximately 17,000 MW of peak load.
Ziad was elected as one of two Western representatives to the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) Operating Committee. He has served on numerous WECC operations, planning, and market committees and has lectured on electric market design and operations, privatization, and deregulation at the University of Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne), the University of Toulouse, École d’Ingénieurs de Purpan, Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, and other higher education institutions. He also serves as a technical advisor to the European Union on deregulation.
Career Highlights
- Test Engineer on Pacific Gas & Electric’s (PG&E) $1 billion, 1,200 MW Helms Hydroelectric Pumped Storage Plant located east of Fresno, California
- Test Engineer for PG&E’s 750 MW gas-fired Moss Landing Power Plant (MLPP) in Monterey, California; designed modifications to reduce minimum load from 250 MW to 50 MW for Units 6 and 7 (2 × 750 MW)
- Team member for the implementation of PG&E’s Energy Management System (EMS) and SCADA system, enabling remote control of more than 15,000 MW of generation
- Assisted in restoration efforts of PG&E’s San Francisco electric system following the 1989 earthquake
- Optimized and automated the economic and hourly dispatch of PG&E’s hydroelectric system across all 16 river basins, spanning nearly 500 miles from Redding in the north to Bakersfield in the south; the system utilizes water from more than 100 reservoirs and includes 68 powerhouses with a total generating capacity of 3,896 MW
- Represented PG&E on the California Public Utilities Commission’s two competing electric restructuring proposals
- Participated in the development and implementation of the first Unscheduled Flow Policy at WSCC
- Participated in restoration efforts following the 1996 Western North America blackouts, which affected four million people across nine western states and parts of Mexico, with outages lasting up to four days in some areas
- First CAISO employee responsible for implementing CAISO operating, scheduling, settlement, and bidding systems, as well as securing Balancing Authority certification
- Led CAISO efforts to obtain certification to operate as a Balancing Authority by integrating PG&E, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas & Electric systems
- Launched the first CAISO electricity markets
- Oversaw CAISO market operations during the California Energy Crisis
- Led CAISO efforts to implement the nodal market design
- Founded ZGlobal Inc. in 2005
Education & Credentials
Ziad holds a Bachelor’s degree and a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering, with a minor in Mathematics (summa cum laude), from Montana State University. His post-graduate work focused on power system applications, optimization, production modeling, unit commitment, and power economics. He also completed a Management Program at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley.
Ziad has authored more than fifty publications on a wide range of energy-related topics. He is a licensed Professional Engineer in the State of California and a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).