Zach Nelson currently serves in Georgia Power’s Grid Transformation organization as the DERMS Program Manager for Southern Company’s DERMS initiative. The goal of this initiative is to deploy an enterprise-wide Distributed Energy Resource Management System (DERMS) for Southern’s three electric operating companies. In this role, Zach leads a diverse team of subject matter experts and technical leaders, responsible for prioritizing use cases, identifying functional and non-functional requirements, assessing data readiness, and developing implementation plans with coordinated resource strategies to ensure a successful DERMS deployment.

Prior to his current position, Zach served as the manager of Georgia Power statewide Distribution Reliability. In this role, he provided strategic leadership and work direction for reliability improvement projects and technical evaluation of distributed energy resources interconnecting to the Distribution system.

Since joining Georgia Power in 2007 as a Distribution Engineer, Zach has held several leadership positions within Power Delivery, primarily focused on Distribution Operations and Geographic Solutions and Services. In addition to Southern Company committee leadership, he is a past Chair of the Southeastern Electric Exchange Power Quality & Reliability Working Group, and has been involved with various IEEE, EPRI and NEETRAC working groups.

Zach earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Tech and a Master of Business Administration from Georgia College & State University. In the community, he is an active member of Citizens of Georgia Power and participates in local volunteer efforts.