Project Description
Tracy West
DIRECTOR, RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
SOUTHERN COMPANY
Tracy West currently serves as director of research and development for Southern Company. In this role, she oversees a broad spectrum of research programs and projects, including the generation, environmental, power delivery and end-use sectors of the electric utility business.
Prior to joining Southern Company’s research and technology management organization in 2016, West was a general manager in environmental affairs for Georgia Power, overseeing air emission strategies, compliance monitoring and reporting, as well as the Georgia Power environmental laboratory, which provides services for the entire Southern Company system generating fleet.
From 2010 to 2014, West served as plant manager of Georgia Power’s Plant Hammond, a four-unit coal-fired plant in northwest Georgia. She also held several roles in Southern Company’s engineering and construction services organization, including technical services manager and project manager for a major flue-gas desulfurization project, the first commercial scrubber in the Southern Company generation fleet.
West began her career with Southern Company as a co-op student in the mid-1980s, working in commercial and industrial marketing. Upon graduation from college, she went to work for the consulting firm Energy Management Associates, the creator of PROMOD™ a production costing model. Tracy provided global support to electric utilities and commission staffs on probabilistic modeling and analysis used for bid evaluations, mergers and system planning studies. Nine years later, she returned to Southern Company, joining system planning. Over the course of her career at Southern Company, she has held positions within five business units across the company.
West holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and an MBA from Samford University. She currently sits on Georgia Tech’s Mechanical Engineering External Advisory Board, DOE’s Microgrid Steering Committee and is a member of EEI’s Microgrid Working Group.
