Curtis Ashton has more than 30 years of experience with DC power systems, batteries, and grounding in the Electric Utility, Telecom, and Data Center markets. He has worked for SRP (an electric utility), the predecessor companies of Lumen (telecommunications and Data Centers), and his present employer, American Power Systems LLC (which is a DC power services company owned by a large battery manufacturer). Curtis is a former vice-chair of ATIS-STEP, the former vice president of IEEE PELS TC7 (Intelec), and the immediate past chair of the IEEE PES ESSB (and chair or an officer of several of its working groups). In some of these roles, he has been the primary author of almost a dozen international standards. He has presented on power, grounding, battery, and energy storage systems around the world and been published many times. He is also the technical committee chair and emcee of the annual Battcon conference. Curtis has an electrical engineering degree from ASU, and is a master electrician in the state of Colorado. In his free time, he enjoys practicing his Spanish language skills and refereeing high school soccer and basketball.