Interconnection: Renewable Energy USA
Welcome to Megawatt Recruitment’s monthly newsletter to keep you connected to what’s going on in the renewable energy industry in the United States and provide more insight, knowledge, and connection to the people and companies who drive our industry.
What People Are Talking About
- Elda River Capital Management, announced an investment into US battery energy storage system (BESS) company Spearmint Energy as it seeks to continue to develop and operate its 4.1 GW BESS portfolio.
- NerdWallet released its “6 Best-Performing Clean Energy ETFs for July 2024” with the top performer boasting 35% returns and #6 returning a healthy 25% return.
- SunPower’s stock plunged 40% following an announcement that it would no longer offer solar lease or solar PPA sales as of July 17th and would halt all new shipments and project installations.
- Basalt Infrastructure Partners acquired AEP’s distributed generation portfolio company, AEP OnSite Partners, for $315M.
- In yet another setback for offshore wind developers, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners’ offshore wind farm, Vineyard Wind, lost a turbine blade, forcing Nantucket beaches to close due to sharp fiberglass shards washing up on shore.
- DG IPP Catalyze is partnering with EPC GreenSpark Solar to construct 10 projects totalling 60 MW.
- According to new data released by the FERC, installed renewable energy now accounts for over 30% of the U.S.’s power generation capacity and predicts high probability of about 89+ GW to be installed between now and May 2027.
- 5,000 sheep care for 4.7 miles of vegetation around Avangrid’s 162 MW Pachwaywit Fields solar farm and 194 MW Lund Hill solar farm, the largest solar grazing operation in the Pacific NW. Avangrid’s 238 MW True North Solar also produced first power in Texas.
- Chinese stationary energy storage product manufacturer Xiamen Hithium Energy Storage Technology Co., Ltd. (Hithium), announced its U.S. subsidiary plans for a new $100M battery module and system assembly facility in the Dallas metro area with annual capacity of 10 GWh.
- NREL forecasts fixed-bottom offshore wind turbines could produce cost competitive green hydrogen at less than $2/kg by 2030 off the New York coast, though U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm hopes to get it down to $1/kg of H2.
- In what will be the world’s largest renewable energy production and transmission project, Sun Cable has secured principal environmental approval for its Australia-Asia PowerLink project, a hub projected to produce 17-20 GW of power in Australia’s northern territory and to deliver 2.5 GW to Singapore via 2,500+ miles of subsea cable.
- Leeward Renewable Energy secured a $1.25B credit facility to support construction of 890MW of wind, solar, and ESS in the USA, to be completed by 2025.
- Construction began this month to transform the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal into the nation’s largest offshore wind port and will support Equinor’s 54-turbine Empire Wind 1 project which is slated to bring over 800 MW of power to NYC.
- Cedro Hill wind farm, built in 2010, is getting an upgrade by Clearway Energy Group to replace old blades and turbines which will increase capacity from 150 MW to 160 MW.
Recent Personnel Moves and Promotions
REC Solar appointed Rob Jetty as CEO. He most recently worked at DSD Renewables as COO.
Offshore Wind Consultants (OWC) appointed Gill Howard Larsen as Head of the Americas (North and South). She previously served as Global Director of Renewables at UL. This follows an early move by UL veteran Rubin Sidhu who joined OWC as Managing Director for Onshore for the Americas in May 2024.
Brian Dee joined Swift Current Energy, a wind and solar developer and IPP, as CFO from Atlantic Power & Utilities where he was in a similar role.
Andy Hoffman joined Amp Energy, a developer of renewable energy and green hydrogen projects, as CFO, previously with The Carlyle Group as a senior investor for energy, power, digital, and renewable fuels.
8 Rivers, a decarbonization technology developer appointed Asheley Kinsey as CFO, from midstream company TC Energy where he was SVP of Strategy, Corporate Development and Energy Transition.
Arevon welcomed a new Managing Director for Project Finance, Nimmi Kavasery, who left Bank of America where she was a Director in the Global Sustainable Finance Group.
Origis Energy announced Deborah Kross joined as SVP of Capital Markets, previously Managing Director, Portfolio Manager, Power, Utilities and Renewables at Wells Fargo and a 20 year industry veteran.
Cordia, a KKR portfolio company dedicated to district heating and cooling, hired Richard Riopel as Senior Regional Director of Growth. He was previously Managing Director of International Growth with Blue Marine Energia Grupo and worked with Baker Hughes.
Catalyze, a community solar & distributed generation developer, hired Andrew Blevin as SVP of Project Finance from Aspen Power where he was Chief Risk Officer.
Soltage, a developer of C&I solar with a specialism in municipalities, hired Elizabeth McKeever as General Counsel from Solar Landscape where she was in a similar role.
Franchesca Alamo joined Solar Landscape as Associate General Counsel from Baker McKenzie where she was a Transactions Associate.
Solar Landscape also hired Rob Ritchie as VP of Energy Storage from Nexamp where he was Director of Energy Storage.
Chaberton Energy, a community solar developer, welcomed a new Director of Legal and Corporate Affairs, Derek Barber, from telecommunications company Bug Tussel where he was a Corporate Counsel.
Eos Energy Enterprises hired two Directors of Sales, Harsha Narravula and Christopher Kimmes, following their previous hire of a new VP of Sales in April, Justin Vagnozzi.
Following the departure of Michael Frenette in May to Trina Solar, Kruger, a paper and pulp manufacturing company, hired Jeffery Tundo as their new Director of Community Solar Development.
Paces, a project siting and due diligence software provider, hired Travis Nardin as its new Head of Sales. He was previously with Gainsight, which was acquired by Northpass in 2023, as Senior Director of Sales for Emerging Products.
Market Insights: RE+ Mid-Atlantic and SEIA attends the RNC
Earlier this month, RE+ Mid-Atlantic took place in Philadelphia. It was an energizing event filled with interesting people, companies, and topics of discussion. There were three things that were particularly surprising and two came during the opening remarks:
The first was when Abby Hopper, the President and CEO of SEIA (Solar Energy Industries Association) shared that she was coming to the event directly from the Republican National Convention. On top of that, although SEIA has been around for 50 years, she mentioned that this was the first time SEIA had been to the RNC. Part of the reason SEIA attended was because the American Conservative Coalition (ACC), whose goal is to build the conservative environmental movement, hosted a booth at the RNC and held a reception. Abby attended the reception (you can see her video here) as did RNC Chairman Reince Priebus where he encouraged conservatives to have discussions about solutions for climate change. At RE+ Mid-Atlantic, Abby highlighted that SEIA’s job to advocate for the industry remains the same no matter which party takes office, and she will also be attending the DNC in September.
In reading about the ACC event, I learned that House of Representatives member John Curtis (R—Utah) started the conservative climate caucus with a goal to educate House Representatives on climate policies and legislation. At the ACC’s RNC reception he said “Five years ago, it was a debate about the science. Today it’s a debate about the techniques, and that tells you everything you want to know.” according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. At the ACC event, there were no chants advocating to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act but rather, senior Republicans were encouraging people to come together to talk about finding paths to reduce human-induced climate change.
Onto the second surprise that came during the opening remarks of RE+ Mid-Atlantic. Often during events, someone will do a poll of the room to get a sense of how many people are representing different segments of the market: solar vs wind, EPCs vs IPPs, utility vs community vs C&I vs residential. The latter is where the big surprise came. Based on how many hands went up, it seemed the majority of attendees for this conference were focused on community solar. There was also a large contingent from the state of Maryland. If this event had been the Coalition for Community Solar Access’s annual summit in Denver last month, I certainly would not have been surprised by the turn out of community solar developers but this was RE+.
In retrospect, it should not have been surprising. After all, Maryland has a goal to reach 100% clean energy by 2035 and 100% renewable energy by 2040, and this conference was for the Mid-Atlantic states. As of 2022, only 12% of Maryland’s energy was coming from renewable sources. I’ll be keeping an eye on solar development Maryland from here on out!
The third surprise happened during a chance meeting in the networking area. I met Aditya Sharma, Business Development Manager of Strategic Opportunities with Moog Construction. When he introduced himself, my first questions was “What is an aerospace guy doing at a renewable energy conference?” He laughed and noted that I was the first person he met at the event who even heard of Moog Inc. He proceeded to share with me a video of Moog’s CrewMate, a semi-automated solar panel lifting system for ground mounted arrays. The CrewMate Machine allows teams to install panels faster than the traditional methods, reduces worker fatigue and injury rates, and reduces overall costs for installation.
In conclusion, RE+ Mid-Atlantic was a good conference that covered interesting topics such as grid resilience, energy storage solutions, and AI integrations for DER management and C&I assets and it attracted interesting people and companies that are doing wonderful things for our industry.
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Thank you for joining us for another issue of Interconnection: Renewable Energy USA. We hope you enjoyed it and we look forward to keeping in touch and exchanging ideas, insights, and opinions. If you are a company considering hiring, we welcome the opportunity to present our services and capabilities. If you are a candidate, please check our jobs page or reach out to us to discuss your background, skills, and future aspirations.