s3: the solar software summit

Yann is the President of North America at Conergy, one of the largest downstream solar companies in the world. In this role, Yann manages a team of 45 to develop, finance and manage assets throughout the Country. With locations in Miami, New York and San Francisco, Conergy has deployed over $250million and added 100MW to its balance sheet in the past year within the region.

Yann is a known solar expert, who founded and runs SolarWakeup, a daily newsletter that thousands of solar industry professionals have read every day since 2012. Yann has been cited for his perspectives on the solar industry in numerous publications, including Greentech Media, PV Magazine, PV Tech and the local business journals.

Previous to Conergy, he co-founded several solar companies within the EPC and finance segments. He is deploy involved in solar public policy and works with national trade groups to advance solar policy across the Country. Yann has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from The Johns Hopkins University and lives in Miami, Florida with his wife and two children.

Pete Cleveland has been with Trinity Solar since 2010 when he transitioned from Land Surveying to the solar industry.  Pete began with Trinity Solar as a System Designer and has grown to become the Director of Innovation and Technology where he focuses on company efficiencies and technology implementations.  Given his technical background and in depth knowledge of land surveying fundamentals, Pete’s most recent achievement with Trinity was the development and implementation of their Remote Site Assessment process.  The Remote Site Assessment, or RSA as he calls it, has proven to change give Trinity an edge in the industry in designing Photovoltaic systems yielding higher efficiencies and profits both for the customer and company in the like.

Kevin currently works for Standard Solar Inc. as a Project Engineer where he is responsible for technical proposal development and complete system design of commercial DG projects. In just 10 months at SSI, he has pioneered the integration of solar design software into their design process, effectively doubling productivity while improving value engineering capabilities. In his short time, Kevin has also completed more than 100 commercial solar proposals and fully designed over 600 kW of commercial rooftop projects. Kevin graduated with honors from Virginia Tech with a BS in Materials Science and Engineering, and a minor in Green Engineering.

Jonathan Doochin is the CEO of Soligent Holdings Inc., including Soligent, the largest U.S. pure play solar distributor, financier, training and technology platform touching over 5,000 installers.  Doochin has successfully led the rollup, investment in, and growth of nearly a dozen solar companies.  Doochin and his partners actively invest funds and human capital know-how into uniquely positioned businesses across the energy sector.

Prior to Soligent Holdings, Doochin co-founded and led companies in software, automotive, finance, and construction.  Doochin co-founded Clark Energy Group, a national ESCO awarded $5B IDIQ contract for renewable energy development projects with the US government. Doochin has also served in the public sector as a Senior Advisor at the U.S. Department of Energy helping deploy $13B in energy funds. Doochin attended Harvard College and Harvard Business School where he followed his passion in education and co-founded two different well known leadership institutes to further leadership development and education.  Doochin spends his spare time hiking, running, traveling, and mentoring.

Unirac’s U-Builder is one of the leading racking design tools in the industry and is provided free of charge to Unirac customers.  Ernest developed Unirac’s original online configurators over eight years ago and continues to lead the development of the newest generation of Unirac online technical services.

Ernest’s role at Unirac is now as a Product Manager in charge of both software and rail-free residential products after spending time as a software developer and product development engineer.  He has a Bachelor’s of Science in Mechanical Engineering and Master’s Degree in Engineering Management.

Paul Grana is the co-founder of Folsom Labs, where he leads sales and marketing, where he has helped to grow the company to thousands of installers in over 70 countries. He founded the Solar Software Summit in partnership with GTM Events. He previously worked at Abound Solar, and led product management and technical marketing with Tigo Energy.  Paul holds a BS in Mathematics and Economics from the University of Chicago, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Joe is COO and a co-founder of RadianGEN. He has over 15 years of experience in solar project development, construction, and operations. Joe has held senior management positions at three successful U.S. solar power producers: Renewable Ventures (co-founder), MMA Renewable Ventures, and Fotowatio Renewable Ventures, where he led technical development, construction, and operations. Joe holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Minnesota, an M.S. in Energy Engineering from Stanford University, and an M.S. in Environmental Science and Management from the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Mr. Brian Kelly is Director of Technical Services at First Solar, specializing in Strategic Marketing and Business Support. He is passionate about reducing the cost of PV project development through the use of technology that enhances decision making and removes business constraints.

Brian has worked in the thin film business world for nine years in various business improvement roles. Prior to joining First Solar, he held positions in business operations, project development, and manufacturing at Intel Corp, and ICI in the US, Asia, and Europe.

Mr. Kelly has two masters degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a BE from University College Dublin in Ireland.

Dirk Liebich was recently appointed Global Chief Technology Officer of REPOWER by Solar Universe, one of the top 10 providers of residential solar in the U.S. In his new role at this high-growth company, Dirk will drive expansion and scalability through technological innovation, enablement and collaboration. REPOWER operates across 11 states through 100+ partners that market, sell, and install solar under the REPOWER brand. Their innovative business model has created a marketplace linking specialty players including Manufacturers, Lead Generators, Sales/Origination firms, Financiers, Distributors and Installers into a cohesive network that collectively provides homeowners with the best solar solution available.

He is an accomplished senior executive and entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience driving digital transformation through strategic and technical leadership. His extensive experience across industries has focused on leading demand-driven business strategies through process optimization, advanced information modeling and deployment of cloud-based technologies. He has transformed multiple prototypes into comprehensive platforms by leveraging enhanced business intelligence and machine learning techniques.

A widely respected thought leader in the field of Digital Transformation, his bIog “Das Magazin” enjoys a global following. He is a frequent guest speaker and author - his latest book “Social goes Mobile - Kunden gezielt erreichen” is available on Amazon. A native German, Dirk speaks German, English and French. He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Bochum.

Nicole Litvak is a Solar Analyst at GTM Research with a focus on the downstream US solar market. In addition to tracking the competitive landscape of installers, financiers, and technology providers in the residential and commercial market segments, Nicole serves as editor of PVNews, the solar industry's longest running market research periodical. Nicole has prior internship experience in corporate sustainability, solar water heating, and business development. She graduated from Brandeis University magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa with majors in Economics and Psychology.

Scott Moskowitz is the Director of Strategy and Market Intelligence at Hanwha Q CELLS America Inc., where he heads market research and leads communication and policy initiatives. Prior to Q CELLS, Scott was a Research Manager at GTM Research and head of the Renewable Technologies Group, leading a team of analysts covering technology trends in the solar, storage, and wind energy markets. Scott holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and mathematics from Vanderbilt University and a master’s degree in environmental engineering from the University of California, Davis.

Ara Petrosyan has over 10 years of solar experience, and was one of the first solar contractors in California. Upon leaving Armenia State University where he studied Engineering, he went on to work for numerous construction companies. Shortly thereafter, his engineering experience led him to the solar industry. Ara realized that solar was going to be more accessible to consumers in the future and going to provide better opportunities for homeowners to cut down on costs. Ara also saw in solar energy a chance to change the world for the better, and with this in mind Ara set out to perfect his craft. Over the next 10 years, he gained an enormous amount of knowledge and expertise, working alongside leaders in solar energy such as SunPower and SolarWorld, becoming a top expert in the solar industry. With considerable training in solar technology as well, Ara is extremely skilled at analyzing the economics and installation needs of photovoltaic solar. In 2012 Ara formed La Solar Group with the firm conviction of providing only the highest quality systems at reasonable costs.

In 2012 La Solar Group’s operation consisted of 4 employees, and focused primarily on smaller, residential customers. Today, due to incredible growth of the company, Ara oversees the day to day operations and professional development of more than 70 employees serving large commercial clients, and multi-family complexes across the Southern California area. Ara manages and negotiates with vendors, and suppliers to ensure the high quality value of our product. Ara’s selftaught, entrepreneurial spirit is fueled by his passion for the alternative energy industry.

Joshua F. Powell, AIA, is the CEO and a founding partner of RevoluSun LLC (RevoluSun Smart Home) where he leads Hawaii operations and acts as the Responsible Managing Employee (RME) for all of the companies’ business.  He has overseen the development and installation of thousands of residential, commercial and utility-scale photovoltaic projects over the last decade. He has successfully scaled the company in response to unprecedented growth and utility challenges and has a track record of success in high growth industries.  Josh is also Chairman and Treasurer of RevoluSun Solar Corp., a franchise entity founded by the RevoluSun partners operating in high growth PV markets in broader North America.

Prior to co-founding RevoluSun, Josh served as Vice President of Construction Operations for what was then Hawaii’s largest locally-owned renewable energy firm, managing all construction operations and logistics.

Josh is a licensed Architect in Hawaii and Idaho, and a General Contractor.  In 2005, Josh also launched a design and construction development company called freedomHAUS focused on residential and mixed-use development in Hawaii and select North American markets.  Today freedomHAUS focuses on single and multifamily development using integrated smart home and smart energy technologies.

Prior to launching freedomHAUS, he served as pre-construction manager for Actus Lend Leases’ multi-billion dollar Hawaii Military Housing re-development.  From 1997 to 2003 he served as a Naval Officer in the Civil Engineer Corps. Over the last two decades Josh has been involved in the direct design, procurement and execution of more than a billion dollars in construction on thousands of projects ranging from housing to commercial and hotel construction and fuel terminals, industrial waterfronts and renewable energy projects.

As CTO of Vivint Solar, Dan Rapp has helped Vivint Solar become one of the fastest growing solar energy companies. With his extensive background in R&D, big data and science, he has led his team at Vivint Solar Labs where they are responsible for all aspects of technology from custom software and hardware development used in site analysis to PV and Energy Storage system design to data collection and aggregation to DER fleet monitoring and analytics to technical qualification of products, vendors and partners. 

Prior to joining Vivint Solar, Rapp held a number of leadership positions in R&D where he was responsible for introducing applied research into products. At FamilySearch, the world’s largest free geneaology organization, he was VP of UX, Web Development and Research. He was responsible for improving FamilySearch through user experience innovation and applied research in the following areas: large system scale and performance, handwriting recognition, language processing, and graph theory. At Whizbang! Labs, He was a Distinguished Engineer and led the team responsible for large scale distributed computing. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Applied Physics from Brigham Young University.

Jake is an investor with Emergence Capital and leads the firm’s Natural Resources Cloud practice. With a background as an energy entrepreneur and consultant, he is passionate about bringing the cloud to the natural resources sector by helping to grow software companies focused on agriculture, water, and energy opportunities.
Jake is currently a Board Observer at DroneDeploy and Augmedix.

Prior to joining Emergence, Jake worked in Kleiner Perkins’ Green Growth Fund, where he sourced and led diligence on companies in the geospatial, agricultural tech, and enterprise SaaS sectors.

Prior to investing, Jake led international business development at Astonfield Renewables, a startup focused on developing utility-scale solar power plants in emerging markets. He helped grow the firm from pre-revenue to owner/operator of $75M in assets. Jake began his career in management consulting at Katzenbach Partners (acquired by Booz & Co).

Jake earned his B.A., magna cum laude, from Yale University and his MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar. Jake also earned an MS in Environment and Resources from Stanford.

Stephen Simons is the Chief Information Officer for Direct Energy Solar, the residential and small commercial solar division of Direct Energy, one of the largest retail providers of electricity, natural gas, and home services in all of North America.  Stephen has been with the business since its inception as Astrum Solar, which in 2012 was ranked #2 on the INC 500 list of fastest growing companies in the United States and is responsible for the creation and evolution of their end-to-end enterprise software platform.

A customer-driven business executive and technology thought leader with experience at every stage of the corporate lifecycle from start-up to large enterprise, Stephen not only brings his practical, visionary leadership to the energy industry, but also finds time to serve as a board member for Yet Analytics, a high growth, data-forward start-up out of Baltimore, MD that is revolutionizing the way that companies think about, manage, and motivate their people. When he is not crunching data, he and his wife provide insight on other topics like life, the universe, and everything as the founding pastors of Creation Springs Church in Carroll County, MD.

Eric Wesoff is Editor-at-Large at Greentech Media. Prior to joining GTM, Eric Wesoff founded Sage Marketing Partners in 2000 to provide sales and marketing-consulting services to venture-capital firms and their portfolio companies in the alternative energy and telecommunications sectors. Mr. Wesoff has become a well-known, respected authority and speaker in these fields.

His expertise covers solar power, fuel cells, biofuels and advanced batteries. His strengths are in market research and analysis, business development and due diligence for investors. He frequently consults for energy startups and Silicon Valley's premier venture capitalists.