Security and Reliability Council

David Binnie is an executive leader with international experience in the energy sector spanning 30 years and a strong commitment to drive the energy transition to low carbon. He started his career as an engineer for BP.

He has held numerous leadership roles in operations, commercial and strategy in New Zealand, the Middle East and Europe. In New Zealand he has held senior roles in government and Z Energy. He has also led global scale projects in hydrogen, commissioned NZ’s first bio-diesel business and now leads the transformation of Genesis Energy’s power production to biomass.

David is appointed for a three-year term from 1 April 2025.

André is one of New Zealand’s most experienced energy network engineers. As Vector’s Chief Engineer, he oversees Vector’s future network roadmap. Core to his role is driving implementation of Vector’s strategy to navigate the convergence of traditional network assets with new technology and digital solutions, designed to deliver affordable, reliable, safe, and resilient outcomes for customers. André’s ability to span ‘the old and new’ worlds of the energy sector and to provide customer centric engineering advice, means his expertise is highly valuable.

Prior to joining Vector in 2014, André held technical and executive leadership roles in a range of large energy businesses across South Africa, New Zealand and Australia. He brings more than 30 years’ experience in distribution and transmission across both electricity and gas.

André holds a B.Eng (Electrical) and a M.Eng (Electrical and Electronic) from the University of Pretoria, South Africa, and a PGDipBus (Finance) from the University of Auckland.

Steve Duggan is a commercial leader with over 25 years' experience in global organisations. He has held leadership roles in a wide range of sectors, including (but not limited to) Finance, Strategy, Energy and Insurance, both in New Zealand and worldwide in Australia, Canada, Mongolia and the UK.

Steve has significant experience in Board reporting and governance and holds a number of executive directorships across New Zealand and the Pacific region. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce with First Class Honours from University of Otago.

Steve is appointed for a three-year term from 1 April 2025.

Chris has worked his entire career in the electricity supply industry and brings a well-rounded set of experience and knowledge. Chris is the General Manager Network at Electra and was previously Electricity Security Manager at Meridian Energy. Chris also is a member of the Electricity Engineers Association Executive.

He has spent 26 years working in a wide range of operational roles including generation control, trading, transmission connection and coordination, new windfarm connections, outage management, governance, policy, various industry working and advisory groups, and process safety.

Prior to this, Chris was part of the ECNZ graduate engineering programme, where he worked on thermal and hydro assets around the country. While undertaking his Bachelor of Engineering (Hons) at the University of Canterbury, he worked summers at the Tasman Electric Power Board in a wide range of roles including transformer refurbishment and network planning.

Ben Gerritsen leads the commercial management of Firstgas Group’s regulated gas and electricity networks, and has responsibility for policy and regulatory engagement, marketing, and external communications.

Ben is on the Board of GasNZ and the Bioenergy Association of New Zealand.

Ben has undergraduate degrees in law and economics and holds a Masters’ degree in Public Policy from Georgetown University in Washington, DC.

Allan Miller is an executive Director of ANSA®, providing modelling and network planning insights for the growing connection of distributed energy resources, such as photovoltaic solar and electric vehicles, to low voltage distribution networks. ANSA® also models solar farms and commercial solar and industrial decarbonisation.

Allan's experience includes leadership and technical roles in the electricity and international high-tech industries. He was Director of the Electric Power Engineering Centre, University of Canterbury, from 2011 to 2017, where he established and led the GREEN Grid research programme. GREEN Grid research investigated the integration of distributed energy resources into low voltage distribution networks, and the integration of more variable renewable energy into the electricity system. During and after this time he was also a consulting engineer, providing independent expert advice to the electricity and technology industries.

Prior to that Allan was a Product Manager, followed by Managing Director, of Allied Telesis Labs Ltd, a product development centre for the Japanese computer networking company Allied Telesis. He has worked as a hardware and software engineer, as an analyst for Transpower during the establishment of the wholesale electricity market, and Western Power in Perth, Western Australia, where he led a demand response programme.

Allan holds a Ph.D. and B.E. Hons in electrical and electronic engineering.