Dr. Pramod Deo has taken over as Chairperson, Central Electricity Regulatory Commission on 9th June 2008. Dr. Pramod Deo is the longest serving electricity regulator in India. Dr. Deo joined MERC as Member on April 29, 2002. He was elevated as Chairman on February 11, 2005.

Dr. Deo holds a post-graduate degree in Physics, a doctoral degree in Infrastructure Economics and has done post-doctoral research in Energy Policy and Economics. He is also co-author of three books on energy planning, energy management and regulatory practice.

Dr. Deo has 30 years of experience in the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) of which more than 20 years of experience has been at both policy and project management levels in the energy sector. He has worked in the power sector in the Ministry of Power, Government of India, Department of Energy, Government of Maharashtra and international institutions like UNEP and AIT.

In the Department of Energy, Government of Maharashtra his major contribution was drafting the State Electricity Reform Bill 2000. During this period he also held the concurrent charge of Environment Department.

He has worked with the UNEP Risoe Centre on Energy, Climate and Sustainable Development (URC), located in Denmark as Senior Energy Economist for five years (1993 - 1998). On behalf of the Centre he also worked for UNDP on the development of Global Environment Facility (GEF) capacity building proposals to equip Egypt, Jordan and Malaysia to respond effectively to the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC). All the energy-environment projects and climate change mitigation studies extensively covered power sector reforms, energy efficiency and conservation options.

He was the founding Director of state and national level energy institutions, namely the Maharashtra Energy Development Agency (1986-88) and the Energy Management Centre (1989 - 1993), set up to promote renewable energy and energy efficiency respectively. The latter has been upgraded under Energy Conservation Act 2001 to the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE), a statutory body to implement the new law.

He worked as a short-term consultant to the World Bank in 1993 and as a Research Engineer at the Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok from 1985 to 1986.

Dr. Deo is a recipient of the World Wind Energy Award 2005 from World Wind Energy Association for his outstanding achievement in the dissemination of wind energy. Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) selected him for their national award "Distinguished Personality - Energy Management" for the year 2006.