Schneider Electric named Prith Banerjee, the former director of global technology R&D at Accenture, as CTO. Prior to Accenture, Banerjee was CTO of ABB, and before that, he was senior VP of research at HP and director of HP Labs.
Lithium-ion battery maker LG Chem Power named Denise Gray as CEO. Most recently, Gray was VP of electrification powertrain engineering at AVL. She was also director of global battery systems engineering at General Motors, where her team developed the Li-ion battery system (powered by LG Chem battery cells) used in the Chevrolet Volt. Prabhakar Patil, CEO for 10 years, is retiring.
Henry Dziuba, formerly the general manager of SMA Americas, is now senior VP of commercial and industrial markets at Strata Solar, a solar project developer.
Ken Schwarz is now CFO at SunLink, a builder of solar trackers, mounting equipment and combiner boxes. He was most recently CFO at Sungevity.
Daniel Woodson was promoted to director of engineering at REEL Solar. When we last reported on REEL, the large-area cadmium telluride-based solar panel builder had been acquired by a still-undisclosed "Chinese strategic."
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Chris Kuhl is now director of business development for SoCore Energy's advanced energy systems group. Previously, he was with Northern Power Systems, and before that, flow battery vendor ZBB.
California's Clean Energy Jobs Act created a Citizens Oversight Board, which has elected Kate Gordon as board chair. Gordon is vice chair for climate and sustainable urbanization at The Paulson Institute. Members of the Citizens Oversight Board include Arno Harris, former CEO of Recurrent Energy, and Gary Kremen, president of the Purissima Hills Water District.
SunEdison just named Stephen Cerrone as its chief human resources officer. Cerrone was most recently at Hudson's Bay Company, where he led human resources and communications. Prior to that, he was executive VP of HR at Sara Lee Corporation. In case you missed it, the story on SunEdison's layoffs was broken by GTM's Stephen Lacey here on Sunday.
From our previous jobs column:
NRG Energy, one of America's biggest competitive energy suppliers, is "resetting" itself in an effort to tighten its balance sheet, unlock $1 billion in capital, and better define the clean energy piece of its business. In order to simplify itself, NRG will spin off a "GreenCo" in January 2016. The public firm will include residential and commercial solar, EV charging, and home energy management. But that "reset" could result in some management changes at NRG Energy -- including the CEO role. Fierce Energy reports that an anonymous, "highly credible Wall Street analyst" claims to have information "that suggests the ouster of NRG Energy CEO David Crane."
Doyle Beneby resigned as CEO of San Antonio’s municipally owned utility CPS last month and has now signed on as CEO of New Generation Power. Founded by Chirinjeev Kathuria in 2009, New Generation is a renewable power generation firm focused on "acquiring, developing, owning and operating power projects." NGP also develops distributed generation and microgrid projects for on- and off-grid applications.