Juan Torres

Mr. Juan Torres is the Associate Laboratory Director for Energy Systems Integration at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. In this role, he oversees NREL’s research on power systems, cybersecurity, energy security and resilience, decision science, and systems analysis. Torres is Co-Chair for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Grid Modernization Laboratory Consortium (GMLC), a partnership of 14 national laboratories to advance modernization of the U.S. power grid. He co-leads the Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES) research platform and oversees its cyber range. ARIES matches the scale and complexity of real energy systems to accelerate pathways for a clean, secure, and resilient energy future.

Torres has provided congressional testimony on several occasions. In 2021, he testified on Lessons Learned from the Texas Blackouts: Research Needs for a Secure and Resilient Grid, called by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. In July 2019, Torres spoke before this committee’s Subcommittee on Energy about modernizing and securing our nation’s electricity grid. And in 2018, he provided testimony to the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on the topic of blackstart, the process of returning energy to the power grid after a system-wide blackout. Torres currently serves on the Advanced Scientific Computing Advisory Committee for the DOE Office of Science.

Prior to joining NREL in 2017, Torres served in a variety of technical and management positions throughout his 27-year career at Sandia National Laboratories, most recently as deputy to Sandia’s vice president for Energy and Climate programs. At Sandia, Torres led research efforts and vulnerability assessments in cybersecurity, guided research in advanced microgrid and renewable energy, and led the security and resilience team under the DOE’s GMLC efforts.

Mr. Torres holds a bachelor’s degree in electronics engineering technology from the University of Southern Colorado, a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of New Mexico, and has completed additional graduate work in Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University.