energy storage summit 2019

Governor Jared Polis, born and raised in Colorado, is an entrepreneur, education leader, environmentalist, and public servant. After launching several successful companies, including one out of his college dorm room, Polis committed himself to making sure other Coloradans had the opportunity to pursue their dreams and preserving our Colorado way of life. Prior to serving as Governor, Polis served on the State Board of Education and represented Colorado's 2nd Congressional district where he introduced historic public land conservation legislation, worked to reduce our carbon emissions, and pushed for increased usage of renewable, clean sources of energy. Governor Polis has laid out a bold agenda to move Colorado to be powered by 100% renewable energy by 2040, which means cleaner air and water, creating good-paying green jobs that can never be outsourced, and combating the harmful effects of climate change. In his first term, Polis enacted laws to prioritize health and safety first when it comes to oil & gas drilling operations and empowered local communities to regulate oil & gas activities within their borders. He also signed legislation and an executive order to support a transition to electric vehicles, enacted landmark Public Utility Commission reform, and is supporting various efforts to expand energy efficiency, increase community solar and encourage our public utilities to transition to renewable sources of energy.

Frances A. Koncilja was appointed to the Colorado Public Utilities Commission by Governor John Hickenlooper in January of 2016 and confirmed by the Colorado Senate in February with almost unanimous bipartisan approval. Her four-year term expires in January of 2020.

Frances, originally from Pueblo, has practiced law in the Denver area since 1972. She began her career with the Colorado State Public Defender’s Office, and later worked for the U.S. Attorney’s Office. She entered private practice in 1978 and in 1993 founded the law firm Koncilja & Associates, which Frances closed as the result of her appointment to the PUC. For 23 years, the firm handled a broad range of commercial, civil and bankruptcy disputes in state and federal courts.

Throughout her career, Frances has dedicated herself to public service and the people of Colorado. Some of her notable appointments and affiliations have included:

• Colorado Women’s Bar Association, Founding Member
• Colorado Bar Association, President
• Colorado Lottery Commission, Chair and Board Member
• Colorado Economic Development Commission, Board Member
• Colorado Supreme Court & Court of Appeals Nominating Commission
• Colorado Supreme Court Grievance Committee
• American Bar Association, Standing Committee on the Judiciary
• Justice Center Task Force and Citizens for Safe Denver, Co-Chair
• Better Denver, Co-Chair
• Denver’s Infrastructure priorities Task Force, Member
• Denver Rustlers, Member and Lead Organizer
• State Fair Authority Board of Commissioners, Member

Frances earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Southern Colorado State College in Pueblo and received a Juris Doctorate from the University of Colorado law school.  Frances credits any of her successes to her Italian and Slavic blue-collar working class background and the work ethic she learned from her parents, grandparents, friends and family in Pueblo.

Paul Suskie serves SPP as executive vice president of regulatory policy and general counsel. He is responsible for managing the organization’s legal and regulatory policy groups and serves as corporate secretary.

Prior to joining SPP, he was appointed by Gov. Mike Beebe as chairman of the Arkansas Public Service Commission and a member of the Governor’s cabinet — positions in which he served from 2007-2010. At the time of his appointment to the Commission, he was in his third elected term as North Little Rock’s city attorney. Prior to joining the city attorney’s office, Paul worked for former United States Sen. David Pryor and for Arkansas Attorney General Winston Bryant. Paul is a colonel in the Army Reserve where he serves in the JAG Corps. He has served as a military judge for the Arkansas Army National Guard and is a veteran of both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Thomas Plagemann is the Chief Commercial Officer at Vivint Solar. In this position, he is responsible for developing Vivint Solar’s tax equity, capital markets, market expansion, and fundraising efforts and leading the financing strategy beyond its existing third party financing structures. Thomas is based in New York City and has more than 20 years of experience originating and executing financings and investments in energy and infrastructure assets.

During his career, Thomas has been involved with projects valued in excess of $29 billion and has completed transactions across the balance sheet from debt to equity. Prior to joining Vivint Solar, Thomas was Head of Energy, U.S. Corporate & Investment Banking for Santander Global Banking & Markets. While there he was responsible for all the bank’s activities with North American Energy clients across the energy sector, including Oil & Gas, Utilities, and Independent Power Producers.

Prior to joining Santander, Thomas was at First Solar as the Global Head of Project Finance and Transaction Execution. There he ran the sales processes for all of First Solar’s utility scale solar projects globally. He and his team financed and closed the sale of projects totaling over 1.6GW-AC of capacity with a total value in excess of $8 billion across 6 transactions.

Prior to First Solar, Thomas was responsible for AIG FP’s principal investment strategy in the renewable energy sector. His responsibilities included covering the renewable and conventional power industry and general infrastructure and also leading the team that closed tax equity investments in wind and geothermal projects totaling over $1 billion.

Before joining AIG, Thomas was a Managing Director with GE Capital’s energy investment business. There he was responsible for originating specialized equity, debt, and structured transactions for the financing of power plant construction and acquisitions. Thomas started his career as a banker in Deutsche Bank’s project finance group where he was responsible for originating, underwriting, and syndicating non-recourse energy financing.

Thomas received a BA from the University of Minnesota and a master’s degree in International Affairs with a specialization in finance from Columbia University.

Sunil Cherian is the Founder and CEO of Spirae, a company that specializes in software platforms for integrating high levels of renewables and Distributed Energy Resources for a wide range of applications. Since founding Spirae in 2002, he has been focused on productizing distributed energy software and growing the company’s intellectual property portfolio, customer base and strategic partnerships.
Prior to Spirae, Dr. Cherian founded Sixth Dimension, Inc. for providing communication and control technologies for the electricity industry and served as its CEO from 1997 to 2002.

Dr. Cherian has extensive experience in renewable energy integration, microgrids, and distributed energy resources management for end-use and utility applications and holds two patents related to distributed control of electric power systems. He has been involved in shaping the distributed energy industry for over twenty years through various DOE initiatives, Gridwise Alliance and the Fort Collins Zero Energy District. He has served on the Board of Colorado Cleantech Industry Association and as Advisor to the Rocky Mountain Institute’s e-Lab Initiative and the NY REV initiative. He is currently featured in the Smithsonian Institution’s Places of Invention exhibit as an energy innovator.

Walter Cuculic has been working in the renewable energy industry for the past 15 years and in real estate development for 25 years. Currently, Walter is the Senior Vice President of Renewable Energy at AVANA Capital. Since joining AVANA Capital, AVANA has lent almost $200M into renewable energy projects.  These projects have ranged from 1MW to 40MW portfolios. Additionally, AVANA has also financed several solar + storage (battery) projects as well as financed the acquisition of a distress assets and the construction of energy efficiency and bio-gas projects. 
Prior to AVANA, Walter worked in Business Development and Finance for both SunPower and SolarCity. In additional to renewable energy, Walter has a background in energy efficiency and water conservation having represented the residential construction sector on the Board of Directors for the US Green Building Council from 2009-2013.
One of Walter’s proudest accomplishments is that he co-authored and won a $7M Department of Energy grant focused on reducing peak electricity demand through solar, energy efficiency, demand response and battery storage for a residential community in Las Vegas, NV. 
Walter has an MBA from the Anderson School at UCLA and dual degrees from Northern Arizona University in Environmental Engineering and Spanish.

Nate Blair manages the Distributed Systems and Storage Analysis group within the Strategic Energy Analysis Center (SEAC) at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Nate has twenty-five years of experience in energy systems modeling and energy analysis. Before NREL, he worked at the Univ. of WI – Solar Energy Laboratory, Global Energy Partners, and Thermal Energy System Specialists, Transsolar, CSTB (France) and at Sandia National Laboratories, Nate has a B.A. Physics (1992) from Gustavus Adolphus College before a M.S.M.E. (1993) and an MBA (2002) from the UW-Madison. 
His 17 years at NREL include roles developing the System Advisor Model (SAM) and PVWatts – both well-known system modeling tools - as well as the ReEDS electric grid planning model.  He currently manages a growing capability around distribution technology and storage analysis. Recently, he worked on assignment at the ESMAP program within the World Bank from 2015-2016 providing technical support on renewables and specifically variable renewable grid integration.

Kamran Moradi, Chief Mechanical System Engineer, Wärtsilä Energy Storage & Optimization – Dr. Moradi is responsible for all structural and thermal management systems design and commissioning of battery energy storage systems as well as system integration review of all equipment on sites including Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC), Fire Alarm Control Panel (FACP) (detection and suppression), structural design to ISO and CSC standards, batteries, solar plants, wind plants, and all medium voltage and low voltage distribution and communication for all projects. He first joined Greensmith Energy, a Wärtsilä Company, in 2016 and is now part of the Wärtsilä Energy Storage & Optimization business unit. For the last three years, he has personally delivered over 110 MW and 145 MWh of battery energy storage in five countries. Prior to Greensmith, he worked in refrigeration systems manufacturing and photovoltaic thermal (PVT) industries. Dr. Moradi holds a doctor of philosophy in Mechanical Engineering from the Florida International University in Miami, FL, USA where he studied in the Energy Materials Group focused on Lithium-Ion Batteries. He is also a member of IEEE, NFPA, and ASME.

Paul Wattles is Senior Analyst, Market Design and Development, at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the Independent System Operator for 90% of Texas electric load.  The Market Design team leads initiatives to enhance the long-term efficiency of ERCOT’s markets.  Among the group's current initiatives are scoping development of real-time co-optimization of the energy and Ancillary Services markets, and developing a framework for wholesale market participation by Distributed Energy Resources.  Paul has been with ERCOT since May 2004 and has over 16 years of electric industry experience with an emphasis on market design, advanced metering, demand response, and governmental affairs.  He is a graduate of the University of Arizona in Tucson with a degree in journalism.

Mike Seavey has 12 years of Solar and Energy Storage experience with Rexel/Gexpro and now CPS America. While at Rexel Mike developed Rexels US solar program. For the last 2-years Mike has held position of  Energy Storage Project Manager for CPS America. Mike holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Texas A&M University and an MBA from the University of Texas.  Mike began a 22 year career in industrial and process automation with Festo just after he graduated from Texas A&M. During this time his career focus was on automation solutions for the semiconductor industry. 
In 2007 Mike began his career with Gexpro as the branch manager for one of their larger construction branches at the time.  During 2009 the developing US solar market offered national electrical distributors an opportunity to enter into this market. Mike was given the task of forming Gexpro/Rexel national solar program. Due to Mike’s interest in off grid and micro grid battery backup systems he launched Gexpro’s Power IQ Energy Storage program in January of 2015.
For the past two years Mike has held the position of  Energy Storage Product Manager for CPS America. During this time CPS has launched multiple energy storage systems based on their current PCS platform. This systems are used in grid and micro grid applications and are UL 9540 listed.

Since 2013 Mr. Coker has led the efforts to market adoption and installations of Viking Cold’s TES systems throughout North America, the Caribbean, and Australia. He regularly collaborates with energy and refrigeration experts from third-party engineering firms, utilities, government agencies, and cold storage operators for validation studies, pilots, and customer installations. He has also been responsible for the acceptance of Viking Cold’s TES technology into numerous utility programs across the country.

Prior to joining Viking Cold, Collin had three decades of sales and leadership experience and more than 20 years in wholesale and retail energy. He held executive and leadership roles with StarTex Power/Constellation, Gexa Energy, Direct Energy, and Reliant Energy. He attended Texas State University and earned sales and leadership certifications from universities including the Wharton School of Business, Villanova University, Rice University, and Motorola University.

He is considered a subject matter expert in thermal energy storage and frequently presents at engineering, grocery, cold storage, utility, and energy storage conferences around the world.

Mr. McDermott is the Senior Vice President Sales and Business Development for ESS Inc. An energy sector executive focused on growing energy infrastructure and advanced energy technology businesses primarily addressing utility, industrial and commercial sectors, Mr. McDermott has served in numerous executive and leadership roles throughout his career in high-growth start-up companies as well as executive roles in public listed companies. Prior to joining ESS, Inc., Mr. McDermott was the Vice President Sales for Silver Spring Networks where he successfully led the company’s market-building presence and key partnership development for Smart Grid and Smart City business across the APAC region. As Global Head of Business Development at Better Place, Mr. McDermott created the world’s first smart charging commercial offering which leveraged networked electric vehicle charging infrastructure to provide dynamic load management and energy storage services to utilities, grid operators and energy traders. Mr. McDermott is a Hokie from VA Tech where he earned his BS in Mechanical Engineering in Power Systems.

Mike is Borrego Solar’s Director of Business Development for Energy Storage. Mike is responsible for Borrego’s front-of-meter and utility-facing energy storage project development portfolio. Mike identifies strategic pathways and highlights new market opportunities around the rapidly evolving intersection between energy storage, solar, and the traditional grid. Before joining Borrego Solar, Mike worked on the utility side completing system impact studies and designing system modifications for oncoming distributed generation. He is a licensed Professional Engineer in Power Systems and previously earned his Bachelors of Science in Electrical Engineering and Masters of Science in Energy Systems (MSES) from Northeastern University.

Dhruv Patel has been with McCarthy since 2013. In his role as Vice President, EPC within the company’s renewable energy team, he oversees estimating, design and procurement of equipment and leads supplier and subcontractor selection and negotiation nationally for McCarthy’s renewable projects. Dhruv brings his experience with renewable and conventional power plants, transmission line, and substation design and construction to assist clients considering solar and energy related projects across the country. He has been instrumental in expanding McCarthy’s solar construction resume from 60MW to 2.3GW and over 300MW of energy storage.
Prior to joining McCarthy, he worked for Arizona Public Service for 8 years where he held several key positions within the company’s Distribution & Transmission operations group, Interconnection management and Power Procurement team where he was responsible for negotiating PPAs and tolling agreements with developers. In his most recent position at APS he led the APS’s program to develop and own 200MW of utility scale solar projects, where he was responsible for site identification and acquisition, financial analysis, permit and design management, EPC Contract negotiation, regulatory strategy, capital budget management, and compliance reporting.

As Chief Operating Officer, John Zahurancik directs the Fluence teams that create and deliver storage solutions and services to leading customers around the world. Working with progressive power system players, John and his teams create valuable business use cases for grid-scale storage, educate storage users in these benefits, manage the deployment of new systems, and help service these systems throughout their complete lifecycle.

John was a cofounder of AES Energy Storage in 2007, a recognized market leader, and led AES' team in pioneering nearly 500MW of utility-scale applications of battery-based energy storage projects in the U.S., Chile, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland, the Philippines, and the Dominican Republic.

Accomplishments include the deployment of the world’s largest grid connected lithium ion battery (five times), the first power purchase agreement for energy storage at the 100MW Alamitos Power Center, and the first multi-megawatt scale storage systems approved in six countries.

John is a regular industry speaker on energy storage, innovation, and leadership and is often quoted on these topics in mainstream and industry journals. Prior to energy storage, John worked at AES in retail power and fiber telecommunications, and as a consultant and market analyst to the telecommunications industry.

John holds a master's degree in public policy from the University of Michigan and a bachelor's in economics and social science from Florida State University.

Mr. Sproull serves in a business development capacity for ESS.  Having held executive roles and founded startups in both high tech and emerging clean energy spaces for the last 24 years, Bill’s passion centers on bringing disruptive technologies to markets where gaps exist.  Prior to joining ESS, he was involved with several companies focused on solar, storage and energy efficient lighting for commercial facilities.  Mr. Sproull was a founder and business development executive at ClearEdge Power, building it to become a leader in the stationary fuel cell space. Prior to entering the clean tech industry in 2003, Mr. Sproull was an executive at Planar Systems, Inc., in charge of its Industrial Business Unit for custom display solutions, and started his career at Honeywell Inc., serving in various roles in sales, marketing, finance and business unit management in its Aerospace Group.  Mr. Sproull is a graduate from the University of Colorado, with a BS degree in Finance.

Currently working as an application engineer. He optimizes and sizes battery energy storage systems for grid scale storage projects. Stuart has worked in the battery industry since 1988 and for Saft for the last 21 years.  Experience includes battery cell development and application engineering for critical back-up power systems, mobility and grid scale energy storage systems. The last 10 years have been focused on Li-ion systems for the same sectors. He has earned a BSChe degree from Arizona State University in 1988.

Matt Hone, Manager of Energy Storage and New Technologies at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP). Matt is responsible for developing the energy storage portfolio and integrating renewable energy at LADWP. He played a leading role in securing the first utility scale battery storage facility and developed the ground breaking Eland solar + storage facility for LADWP.

Paul Dailey has spent his 20-year career developing, marketing and deploying distributed generation technologies, from micro-CHP to solar + storage, that provide homes and business greater control over where their energy comes from and how they use it. In the course of that work, Paul has interacted with countless solar installation and O&M professionals across the spectrum and continually translates their input into new products and services as well as improvements that help make local control of energy more accessible for everyone. Mr. Dailey holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA from Washington State University.

Charlie Bloch is a Principal at the Rocky Mountain Institute, where he leads cross-sector collaboration, strategy and opportunity development within the global energy transition. His underlying interest is in leveraging technology to improve global prosperity and the environment through innovative finance, partnership and business models. Charlie’s nearly 20-year career comprises a wide range of sustainability subject matter expertise, including utilities, clean energy, distributed energy resources, public water infrastructure, and alternative transportation. That background combined with a mix of consulting, corporate, governmental and entrepreneurial roles provides a diverse perspective for fostering cross-sectoral collaboration and helping to bring innovative ideas to market.

Prior to joining RMI, he provided strategy and business development consulting services to clean energy sector start-ups. He’s helped lead two other startups in each of the food e-commerce (Green Chef) and electric vehicle (Vision Fleet/Evercar) industries. Previously, he served as an Associate Director in Navigant’s energy practice (renewable energy and energy efficiency), supported technology commercialization efforts at the National Renewable Energy Lab, managed business development at MWH Global (water/wastewater), and led environmental marketing and public relations campaigns at Enviromedia.

Elta is the Grid Edge Content Lead at Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables (formerly GTM Research), working on demand-side management in U.S. electricity markets. Prior to joining GTM, Elta pursued a joint Ph.D. funded by the European Commission on Sustainable Energy Technologies and Strategies at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. During her doctoral studies, she researched demand response policies for the implementation of smart grids and has presented her work at both U.S. and European conferences in addition to publishing in international scholarly journals. Elta holds a Master of Science degree in economics and management of network industries and a bachelor’s degree in economics from Union College.

Emma is a staff writer at Greentech Media. She previously covered environmental policy, politics, and climate change at Grist and the New Republic. Emma studied Environmental Analysis at Pomona College.

Ravi is the head of solar research at Wood Mackenzie, where he focuses on solar-plus-storage, solar integration on the grid and related power markets issues. Prior to his current role, he was the head of Wood Mackenzie’s energy storage research practice and covered global storage markets and value chain analysis. As an industry expert, Ravi has been quoted in various publications including New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Forbes, Bloomberg, National Public Radio, BBC, Christian Science Monitor, Wired, and Verge. Ravi has over 10 years of experience in renewables as a consultant, analyst and engineer. Ravi holds a Master of International Business degree from the Fletcher School at Tufts University, a Master of Science in Chemical Engineering degree from University of Washington, Seattle and a Bachelor of Chemical Engineering degree from Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, India.