While we await the confirmation process for President Trump’s latest nominee, Bernard McNamee, to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, he has named Neil Chatterjee as chairman of FERC, a move that will shift leadership of the agency but will not change its political balance.
McNamee is one of the architects of DOE’s failed coal and nuclear bailout plan. He would replace retired Commissioner Robert Powelson. McNamee’s nomination is seen as an effort by the Trump administration to get a reliable pro-coal and -nuclear vote on FERC, in advance of further efforts to bail out those industries.
Marcus Brunner left his post as chief sales officer at Mercedes-Benz Energy to join Canadian energy storage firm Eguana Technologies in the same post. He joins his former Mercedes colleague Livio Filice, who joined Eguana earlier this year.
Nathan Dunn left Enphase Energy as managing director for the Asia-Pacific region to join sonnen as managing director and head of APAC.
Rob Schilling is now SVP of enterprise resource planning and cloud at Oracle. He was previously CEO of Space-Time Insight, which was acquired by Nokia in May.
Sidney Hinton, CEO of Southern Company’s PowerSecure, has retired. He will be succeeded at Southern PowerSecure Holdings by Mark Lantrip, who will continue as chairman, president and CEO of Southern Power.
NEC Energy Solutions has a trio of new executives, including SolarCity/Tesla Energy alum Erik Fogelberg, who will be the VP of global sales; Roger Lin has been promoted to VP of marketing; and Jacques Goldenberg has joined as VP of human resources.
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Enertech Search Partners, an executive search firm with a dedicated cleantech practice, is the sponsor of the GTM jobs column.
Enertech Search Partners is now Quantal.
Enertech recently joined forces with Momenta Partners to launch a new practice called Quantal to focus on building specialized teams in Connected Industry. We believe our genesis in energy is fundamental and inextricable from the broader connected industry markets. We have partnered with companies driving digitization in energy over the past decade and this transformation is now repeating itself in the broader industrial markets, perfectly positioning Enertech (now Quantal) to help companies overcome the same challenges faced in energy.
Momenta Partners’ team works across three practices: advisory, venture and talent. The team has led connected companies and business lines at Apple, Brambles, Daintree, Eurotech, GE Digital, IBM, ThingWorx, Interdigital and Wonderware, to name a few. Additionally, Momenta Partners have been executive search advisors to over 150 IOT leadership placements, and to venture capital investors with a portfolio of more than 25 industrial IOT companies.
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Former RWE director Julia Lynch Williams is now chair of virtual power plant/blockchain startup Solo Energy, where she will develop investor relations and advise on commercial strategies to further the company’s business model.
In New York, the directors of grid operator New York Independent System Operator have named Robert Fernandez, NYISO’s general counsel, to be interim president and CEO. He is replacing Brad Jones.
The Colorado Solar Energy Industries Association has appointed Mike Kruger as its new president and CEO. Kruger is leaving the beltway where he was director of communications at Smart Electric Power Alliance. He’ll be relocating to Denver just in time for the ski season.
After witnessing significant growth in the region, Sungrow has reorganized its operations by forming the Sungrow Americas division. Hank Wang, former general manager of overseas sales at Yingli Solar, will lead as Sungrow Americas' president, and Naveed Hasan will now oversee marketing and strategic initiatives for the entire Americas region.
Zach Ward, former executive at Array Technologies and Advanced Energy, will now lead the North American division (USA/Canada) as CEO.
Elisabeth Brinton has left Australia’s AGL Energy, where she was executive general manager of new energy, to join Royal Dutch Shell in The Hague as global VP of strategy and portfolio in its New Energies division.
Energy analytics firm Innowatts hired Krishnan Kasiviswanathan as CCO, overseeing upstream development for its retail energy platform. Kasiviswanathan was most recently CCO at Just Energy.
Law firm Morgan Lewis has brought on Amy Maloney as partner. Maloney will focus on project finance and development for clients with various types of energy and infrastructure projects.
U.K. engineering, procurement and construction provider Natural Power has a new head of solar and energy storage in North America, Shawn Shaw. He will be responsible for growing the solar and energy storage business lines across the globe. He was previously at The Cadmus Group where he was principal in charge of the DER practice area.
Utility software provider OSI has promoted Al Eliasen from VP of project delivery and operations to COO.
Earlier this year, the Institute for Market Transformation hired Kelly Crandall as manager of state and local policy. She previously worked on energy strategy for the city of Boulder, Colo.