Green Jobs: Sapphire Energy, Jigar Shah, AEE, Powin Energy, Shorai, and More

Executive moves in greentech and renewable energy

Eric Wesoff June 03, 2013

Eric Wesoff

Editor-at-Large
Greentech Media

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.

Darrell Hayslip was named the next Chair of the Energy Storage Association at its 23rd Annual Conference. Hayslip was previously Chief Development Officer for Xtreme Power and helped bring a 36-megawatt storage system to the Duke Notrees Windpower Project.

Elton Hart joined Solar Universe, a solar franchise company, as VP of Sales. Hart was most recently with Comcast.

Shorai, a maker of prismatic cell lithium iron phosphate recreational batteries, named James McCormick as the firm's new CEO. Most recently, McCormick helped with the consolidation of Crossing Automation and Asyst Technologies.

Powin Energy, a subsidiary of Powin Corp., appointed Jeffrey Grumbling as CEO. Powin Energy manufactures and distributes renewable energy and energy storage systems.

Sapphire Energy, aspiring to algae-based fuels production, named Dr. Matthew Croughan, an engineer and researcher in industrial bioprocessing, as CTO. Cynthia ‘CJ’ Warner is CEO and chairman of Sapphire, which operates facilities in Las Cruces, New Mexico and Columbus, New Mexico.

Alterra Power (TSX: AXY) announced that director Paul Sweeney retired as a director and was replaced by John Carson, the firm's CEO since September 2011. Alterra operates six power plants totaling 566 megawatts of capacity, including two geothermal facilities in Iceland, a geothermal plant in Nevada, British Columbia's largest run-of-river hydro facility and its largest wind farm.

Advanced Energy Economy (AEE) named Lisa Frantzis as SVP, Strategy and Corporate Development. Frantzis has served as Managing Director in the Energy Practice at Navigant, where she headed the renewable and distributed energy business.

The Switch, a supplier of large permanent magnet generator and converter packages for wind power and renewable energy, added David Ho to its Board of Directors. Ho worked as President of Nokia in Greater China and Chairman of Nokia Siemens Network in Greater China.

Jigar Shah, founder of SunEdison and former CEO of the Carbon War Room, was added to the board of Empower Energies, a renewable portfolio provider aimed at commercial-scale renewable energy, enterprise energy management, and clean transport.

Jason Wolf, most recently VP of North America for Better Place, was named CEO of Collaboratev, an industry-wide solution for an open, standards-based EV charging platform.

Kevin Skillern has left the managing director of VC post at GE Energy Financial Services and is launching an independent investment platform, according to VentureWire.