Howard Gugel is the vice president of Compliance Assurance and Registration at NERC. In this role, he is responsible directing programs and processes to monitor, review, and evaluate program effectiveness of Electric Reliability Organization (ERO) Enterprise implementation of risk-based compliance monitoring and adherence to the NERC Rules of Procedure, Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement Program, and approved delegation agreements. He is also responsible for overseeing the ERO’s organization registration and certification process.

Prior to this, he was vice president of Engineering and Standards at NERC. In this role, he provided engineering analysis and support for NERC activities and directed all aspects of NERC’s continent-wide standards development process by providing oversight, guidance, coordination, and industry education of the development of Reliability Standards. He also previously served as the director of Performance Analysis, where he was responsible for the development, maintenance, and analysis of reliability performance metrics, including those in NERC’s annual State of Reliability report. This included analyzing various databases of transmission and generations outages to look for statistically significant trends.

In 2022, Mr. Gugel was appointed to the Department of Energy’s Electric Advisory Committee by the Secretary of Energy. He also serves on the North American Energy Standards Board. Mr. Gugel has more than 34 years of experience in the electric utility industry. Prior to joining NERC, he was a transmission area maintenance manager for Progress Energy Florida, where he managed a staff of field personnel who maintained transmission lines and substation equipment. Prior to that, he was a transmission planning manager, also for Progress Energy Florida. His background includes management experience in operations and energy marketing. He has worked for two investor-owned utilities, a rural electric cooperative, and an energy marketing firm.

Mr. Gugel earned his bachelor’s and master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Missouri – Rolla. He is a licensed professional engineer in the state of Missouri.