Jon Wellinghoff, a partner at Stoel Rives and former FERC chairman, was added to the advisory board of First Fuel, a building efficiency analytics firm. Wellinghoff was also added to AutoGrid's advisory board this month, along with Tom Kippola, co-founder of the Chasm Group. Building energy management firm Daintree Networks added Wellinghoff to its advisory board this month 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.
Ron Van Dell, former CEO of microinverter startup SolarBridge, is now CEO of ViZn Energy Systems, a zinc redox flow battery energy storage firm focusing on microgrids. The firm aims to produce a 80-kilowatt/160-kilowatt-hour system housed in a 20-foot shipping container, as well as larger systems. Other flow battery firms include American Vanadium, EnerVault, Primus Power, Imergy and ZBB Energy.
Aclara Technologies named Allan Connolly, former COO of water treatment firm Culligan, as CEO, replacing Brad Kitterman.
Aaron Fyke, former CEO of Energy Cache, a (dormant) startup that explored mechanical energy storage, is now president at Edisun Heliostats, a startup that is "completely rethinking concentrated solar power from the ground up." The company is developing new mirrors and new storage methods, as well as incorporating a Stirling engine into the design. Energy Cache and Edisun Heliostats have received funding from Idealab. Here are the SEC funding documents.
Robert Shanklin and Paul Snider joined Brightergy from St. Louis-based Arch Coal and Kansas City Power & Light, respectively. Shanklin will serve as EVP and Snider will fill the role of VP of policy and government affairs. Brightergy has built, financed, developed and installed more than 1,000 commercial projects, according to the firm.
Harvest Power, a VC-funded firm focused on organics management solutions, named Christian G. Kasper as EVP and CFO. Kasper joins Harvest Power from The Princeton Review, where he served as EVP and CFO.
S&C Electric Company named three new members to its board of directors: Christopher B. Curtis, the former president and CEO of Schneider Electric NA; Jane Irwin of the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan; and James A. Kelly, the former senior VP of transmission & distribution at Edison International.
Scott Ryles "has quietly joined venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as COO, replacing longtime COO Eric Keller," according to Dan Primack of Fortune Term Sheet.
ZBB Energy, a grid-scale energy storage firm integrating flow batteries, named Ted Peck as its sales manager in Hawaii, according to Peck's LinkedIn profile. Peck was the former energy administrator for the state of Hawaii and "quit his state job to become president of Kuokoa, a startup company that had proposed acquiring HEI Industries Inc., the parent of HECO. Kuokoa dropped its bid to take over HEI in early 2013," according to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.