Another week brings more moves and shifts at the upper levels of the renewable energy industry.
[Correction] Francesco Venturini, the CEO of Enel Green Power is now heading the new Global E-Solution division of the Enel Group. After three years of running EGP, Venturini has been requested by Enel Group CEO Francesco Starace to head this new unit with a focus on e-mobility, V2G, recharging infrastructure, energy efficiencies and batteries. Venturini is not leaving the group as we incorrectly reported. We apologize for the error.
Olivier Jacques was promoted to executive VP of USA and EMEA at microinverter builder APsystems. Prior to joining APsystems in 2015, he served as managing director, EMEA at Enphase Energy.
Ultracapacitor vendor Maxwell Technologies named Thibault Kassir, formerly with Knowles Corp., as VP and general manager of energy storage products.
Holy Cross Energy, an electric company cooperatively owned by its approximately 42,000 members (mostly in Colorado's Eagle, Garfield and Pitkin Counties) named Bryan Hannegan as its new CEO. Previously, Hannegan led R&D teams at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Electric Power Research Institute.
Jeff Wolfe, founder of groSolar, is joining Royal Dutch Shell with a "focus on behind-the-meter energy efficiency, storage, distributed resources, and integrated operations (virtual power plants)." He writes: "Transformation from within the fossil industry starts on Monday. No one is more surprised than me that I'm going to work for Shell."
Michael Atkinson joined Doosan GridTech as VP of business development, focused on the utility sector. Previously, Atkinson was the general manager of North America for GE Grid Solutions. Doosan also brought on Ranjan Gupta as its first director of ESS turnkey programs. Gupta previously worked as a director at First Solar's new ventures and product development group.
Ballard Power Systems named Rob Campbell as VP and CCO. Campbell was most recently CEO of SoloPower, and prior to that, he was at another failed thin-film solar firm, Energy Conversion Devices.
Eos Energy issued an update, noting that Ken Langone and Peter Fox-Penner have joined its advisory board. The update also claims, "Eos is taking orders today at a volume price of $160 per usable kWh for delivery in 2017 and $95 per usable kWh in 2022." Billionaire Home Depot founder Langone is an investor in Eos.
Matt Mayberry was promoted to director of residential product management at SunPower. Dan Cohen was promoted to director of strategy transformation and China programs at SunPower.
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Enertech Search Partners, an executive search firm with a dedicated cleantech practice, is the sponsor of the GTM jobs column.
Among its many active searches, Enertech is looking for a Director of Business Development -- Distributed Energy.
This client is leading the market in deployments with innovative utility projects that deploy and manage distributed energy resources, ranging from DER management systems, grid supporting microgrids, smart communities and transactive energy platforms and partnering with leading energy players.
Currently this client is looking for a Sales & BD Director to join its team in the East and engage utilities with solutions that will help to evolve the electricity distribution industry to a more intelligent, real-time grid of the future. The ideal candidate is a driven, results-oriented self-starter that understands utility challenges and opportunities at an operational level and able to convey the strategic value of deploying new distributed resource management solutions.
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Solar Roof Dynamics of Davis, California, a distributor of solar products, added Debbie Schrider as its new VP of sales. Schrider has held senior roles at SolarCity, SunEdison and One Block Off the Grid. Nick Lowrie was hired as director of operations. Lowrie spent eight years building the Northern California operations for SolarCity.
Jeff Russell has joined Baker McKenzie's North America banking, finance and major projects practice as Counsel. Most recently, Jeff served as assistant General Counsel of global asset management at SunEdison. Prior to SunEdison, Russell was Counsel at Silverado Power, a California-based utility scale solar developer.
Trump’s expected pick for top USDA scientist, Sam Clovis, has never taken a graduate course in science, as reported by Talking Points Memo.
From the previous jobs column:
Before founding the just-unstealthed Voltus last year, CEO Gregg Dixon was a senior VP and a founding executive at EnerNOC. Voltus is a challenger to EnerNOC, as is long-standing competitor CPower. In March, EnerNOC CEO Tim Healy said the firm was exploring "potential alternatives to our current structure. This may include the sale or separation of one or more of our business units, a sale of the company, or other alternatives." (Jeff St. John reports on Voltus here.)
Last week we reported that Jon Wellinghoff, the chief policy officer at SolarCity, had left the company now that it has merged with Tesla. The ex-FERC commissioner just told GTM:
"My move in opening my own firm, Policy/DER Consulting, will allow me to better focus on my passions: energy policy and its intersection with distributed energy resources. I see a rapid movement now happening from the old way of siloing technologies like rooftop solar, efficiency, storage, and control technologies to an integration and optimization of systems behind the meter. In order to effectively enable this transition, significant policy initiatives will be necessary. Those initiatives include the creation of efficient transactional financial market platforms based on backend algorithms like blockchain. Having my own firm allows me to fully explore and engage these new paradigms."