Dr. Ernest Moniz, the U.S. Secretary of Energy, named TJ Glauthier as co-chair of a new commission conducting a strategic review of the DOE's seventeen national labs. Prior to this appointment, Glauthier was Deputy Secretary and COO of the DOE and served on a congressional advisory panel reviewing the nation's nuclear weapons program. (Science reports more on the subject of reviewing national labs here.)
Hawaiian Electric Company announced that CEO Richard Rosenblum "plans to retire within a year," according to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Rosenblum has been HECO's CEO and a member of the utility's board since 2009. He joined HECO after 32 years at Southern California Edison.
Nat Kreamer, CEO of Clean Power Finance, was elected Chairman of the Board of SEIA, the Solar Energy Industries Association, replacing Arno Harris of Recurrent Energy, whose term has just expired. SunPower's VP of Market Strategy and Policy, Tom Starrs, is now Vice Chairman.
Innovari named Ed Solar its EVP of global marketing and sales. Solar was SVP of energy storage firm CODA, and before that, he served as CEO of Arcadian Networks. Innovari claims that its "solution attacks the electric grid's core problem -- the load duration curve -- unlocking access to affordable capacity that improves system utilization, reliability, and financial performance."
Advanced Energy Industries announced that after almost three years as CEO of the inverter and power firm, Garry Rogerson has chosen to step down from his role. He will lead the company until a successor is in place.
GMZ Energy, a developer of high-temperature thermoelectric generation, named Cheryl A. Diuguid as CEO. Diuguid previously held executive positions at Invensys, Xerium, EnerSys, and GT Advanced Technologies. GMZ was spun out of MIT with more than $14 million in funding from KPCB, BP Alternative Energy, Mitsui Ventures, I2BF and Energy Technology Ventures, a JV between GE, NRG Energy, and ConocoPhillips. Diuguid succeeds Ian Chao, Dr. Aaron Bent and founding CEO Mike Clary in the CEO role. The startup is working on a bismuth-telluride thermovoltaic device that converts solar heat directly into power via the Seebeck effect, in which a sharp temperature gradient can result in an electric charge.
Flow battery firm American Vanadium named Robert Catell to its board of directors. Catell is currently Chairman of Keyera and was formerly Chairman of National Grid.
TSMC Solar, the Taiwan-based CIGS thin-film solar module developer, added Rommel Noufi, former GM of the National Center for Photovoltaics at NREL, as a CIGS R&D consultant. According to the company, TSMC Solar will expand its annual CIGS thin-film PV module production capacity from its current 40 megawatts to 120 megawatts later this year.
Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati named Ira Palgon as a partner at the firm, joining the energy and infrastructure finance practice.
Jon Wellinghoff, a partner at Stoel Rives and former FERC chairman, was added to the advisory board of FirstFuel, a building efficiency analytics firm. Wellinghoff was also added to AutoGrid's advisory board in May, along with Tom Kippola, co-founder of the Chasm Group. Building energy management firm Daintree Networks added Wellinghoff to its advisory board as well.
Ice Energy, a provider of distributed thermal energy storage, added Cathy Zoi to its board of directors. Zoi oversaw $30 billion in energy investments while serving in the Obama administration as DOE assistant secretary. Ice Energy is aggregating thousands of its rooftop thermal storage AC units for California customers such as Redding Electric, Glendale Water and Power, and Southern California Edison.