More Utility Execs Jump to Smart Grid Startups

The exodus of utility executives to smart grid startups continued Tuesday, with news that Silver Spring Networks and Current Group had landed top managers from Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and Xcel Energy, respectively.

It's a growing trend, as hires by Greenbox Technology, GridPoint and Trilliant in recent months have shown (see Trend Watch: Greenbox Lands Energy Industry Insider as CEO).

First off – Brad Whitcomb, former vice president of marketing and customer innovation at PG&E, who has taken an executive vice president position with Silver Spring.

PG&E is one of Silver Spring's biggest customers. The California utility is deploying about 5.3 million smart meters, many of them containing technology from the Redwood City, Calif.-based smart grid networking and communications startup, in a $1.7 billion project expected to be complete in 2011.

Whitcomb previously led PG&E's demand management programs, which sign up customers to curtail power use during peak demand times. Whether or not that could be a precursor to Silver Spring-equipped networks playing a role in that task remains to be seen.

While the utility promises it will eventually link its smart meters to customer energy monitoring and control systems, just how they plan to do that is an open question, though the utility has suggested it might start with linking smart thermostats to smart meters via ZigBee (see Q&A: PG&E's Andrew Tang).

By the way, Silver Spring also hired Judy Lin, former senior vice president of Cisco Systems' Ethernet Switching Technology Group, earlier this month (see Green Light post).

Given that Cisco has made a big push into networking smart grid systems itself, it's possible that the networking giant and the well-funded startup may start to compete in the future, although they're also cooperating on a one-million smart meter project in Miami (see Cisco Wants to Be Everywhere in the Smart Grid and A Million Smart Meters for Miami).

Next up – Ray Gogel, a former Xcel Energy executive who has joined Current Group as president and chief operating officer.

Current Group makes software and sensors for smart grid distribution automation and end-user applications, and is involved in Xcel's $100 million SmartGridCity pilot project, which Gogel has played an important role in assembling (see Current Group, Qwest Look to DSL for Smart Grid Communications).

Gogel, who has been chief administrative officer, CIO and vice president of customer and enterprise solutions at Xcel, will take responsibility for Current's work in the U.S. smart grid markets, as well as a new push into Europe and Asia, the Germantown, Md.-based company announced.

He's the second Xcel executive involved in SmartGridCity to leap to a startup involved in the project. Last month it was Michael Carlson, Xcel's CIO, who took an executive position with smart grid software maker GridPoint (see Green Light post and GridPoint Beefs Up Smart Grid Software, Lands New Marketing Deal).

Two other big energy executives not directly involved with utilities have also made the leap to smart grid startups this year.

Greenbox, which makes software for monitoring and managing home energy use, hired Ivo Steklac, a 20-year veteran of such metering giants as Elster and Schlumberger, as its new CEO earlier this month.

And Trilliant, the Redwood City, Calif.-based maker of smart meter communications networking systems, hired General Electric veteran Andrew White as CEO in March.