Andrew Tang has moved from SCIenergy to AutoGrid Systems, a smart grid analytics software firm, as VP of Business Development and Strategy. Prior to SCIenergy, Tang was PG&E's Director of Customer Energy Products. AutoGrid, which just raised $9 million, is about unstructured data-crunching. As Jeff St. John writes, "The smart grid presents an interesting problem for the world of big data, and particularly the field of unstructured data. Where traditional data management requires its data to be formalized and regimented, unstructured data systems take their data as-is, and then make sense of it."
On-Ramp Wireless, a maker of wireless communications for energy automation and M2M, announced Kevin Hell as new CEO. Hell was CEO of DivX and SVP at Palm.
FirstFuel Software, a building energy analytics startup, named Jim Borr, formerly with Tendril, as VP of Sales, and Raman Sud as SVP of Engineering.
Min-Su Kim, a 25-year veteran of Hanwha Chemical, was named President of Hanwha SolarOne. Jeong-Eui Hong was named CTO. Hanwha recently acquired Germany's Q.Cells.
An advance look at the National Solar Jobs Census 2012 from the The Solar Foundation:
- Initial results have the solar industry employing 119,016 Americans across 50 states, up 13.2 percent from last year.
- Census participants cited federal solar policy such as the solar ITC and the continued decline of solar module pricing as the most important factors driving solar job growth -- along with state RPS policy and the rise of third-party solar ownership.
- Solar job growth outpaced the overall U.S. economy, which grew by by 2.3 percent (according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics) during the same period.
Solazyme (Nasdaq: SZYM), a bio-based product firm, hired Jean-Marc Rotsaert as COO. Rotsaert was most recently CEO of AAK's U.S. business.