Speakers
Alberto Pototschnig
Mercados, EUI FSR
Alberto Pototschnig is an economist and econometrician by training, with seventeen years of experience in the field of economic regulation, utility sector reform and market design.
Mr. Pototschnig served for 10 years in various management positions of Italian electricity sector institutions; most notably as the CEO of the Market Operator (GME) upon its establishment (2000-2003).
Alberto joined Mercados - Energy Market International in January 2006 from the Italian Transmission System Operator, where he had worked since 2000. In this period he was responsible for designing options for incentive-based regulation of transmission activities.
In the 2000 - 2003 period he was seconded to GME, and under his leadership, the organisation developed the market rules and procedures and designed and implemented the IT market platform, both for the power market and for the Green Certificates market.
Between 1997 and 2000 he served at the Italian Energy Regulatory Authority, initially as Head of the Electricity Tariff Division and later as Director of the Electricity Area, reporting directly to the Chairman of the Authority. In this capacity, he led a team of 18 and had overall responsibility for the development of proposals on new technical and economic regulation for the electricity sector - including tariff for franchise customers, wheeling and use-of-system charges for eligible customers, grid code, market design - to be submitted to the Regulatory Commission for approval. He was also responsible for monitoring and enforcing compliance of electricity companies with current regulation and for representing the Italian Regulatory Authority at EU-level working groups on electricity regulation and market design.
In the 1990’s, he worked for more than seven years for the UK-based economic consulting firm, London Economics, responsible for participating in a number of energy and other utility sector projects, in Europe, Central Asia and Australia.
Alberto Pototschnig currently acts also as Adviser to the Director of the Florence School of Regulation, a joint initiative of the CEER – Council of European Energy Regulators and the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies of the European University Institute in Florence, where he regularly teaches on utility regulation and market design in the energy sector.
Software Skills: Good knowledge and substantial experience in the use of a number of statistical and mathematical software packages (TSP, BMDP, SPSS, Microfit, Matlab).