Yumin Liu is now COO of Recurrent Energy. Liu was most recently VP of the global energy business at Canadian Solar. Prior to Canadian, Liu was president of GCL Solar Energy. Canadian acquired Recurrent in February of this year.
Mark Stout, former director of project development at Meridian Energy, is now VP of project development at Amber Kinetics, a developer of "multi-hour" flywheel energy storage technology.
EPC Stellar Energy was just acquired by REC Solar. Stellar's president, Ted Walsh, will join REC Solar as VP of business development.
Jared Kneitel is now VP of strategic relations and legal counsel at solar carport specialist Solaire Generation. Previously, Kneitel was defense counsel at the U.S. Department of Defense, where he served as "criminal defense attorney to a foreign national detained at the United States Naval Station, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba," according to his LinkedIn profile.
Tom King, former president of National Grid U.S., is joining the board of demand-side management company EnergySavvy. Earlier in his career, King was president of PG&E.
Earlier this year we heard that Bob Powell, president of SunEdison North America, was exiting the world's largest renewable developer. We asked the PR person at SunEdison about Powell's status. Here's the email exchange:
- GTM: "Has Bob Powell left SunEd?"
- PR at SunEdison: "Great to connect with you. We’re looking into this and I can get back to you in a couple of days. Does that work?"
- GTM: "I realize it takes a lot of time to verify if Bob Powell, the president of SunEdison North America, is still working at your firm. Please let me know when you are able to access this information."
Shortly after this exchange, Powell emailed and assured me that he was still with the firm. Powell officially left the company in March. His LinkedIn profile lists him as co-founder and investor in Correlate.
Jade Jones, Nicole Litvak and Adam James have been promoted to senior analyst positions in the solar practice at GTM Research.
From last week's jobs column:
Repower, formerly Solar Universe, named Mahesh Mansukhani as CEO. Mansukhani led the $1.1B Tyvek business unit at DuPont, and most recently, he served as CEO of sBioMed, a startup commercializing a disinfectant. Founder Joe Bono, who previously held the CEO role, will remain with Repower on the board and in a consulting role. Solar Universe offers a franchise model for solar and home energy installers, with 42 offices that have deployed more than 50 megawatts of solar to date.
Matthew Nordan, formerly an investor at Venrock and now a managing partner at MNL Partners, has been added to the board at Quidnet Energy, "a radical energy storage startup" that uses "pressurized water within natural geologic formations as the storage medium." Aaron Mandell, co-founder of Quidnet Energy, describes the startup as "a high-risk experiment that if successful could be an entirely new way to think about providing and storing clean energy." There is also a potential desalination element to the technology. Mandell co-founded AltaRock, WaterFX, Oasys Water, Coskata and GreatPoint, and he currently serves as the CEO of AltaRock, a startup developing next-generation geothermal energy.