German Jamison: Energy Jobs: Powelson Out at FERC, Tesla Exec Churn Continues and More

The churn doesn’t stop in Washington just because summer is in full swing.

Less than a year after Robert Powelson was confirmed as a commissioner at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), he is moving on.

Powelson will become the president and CEO of the National Association of Water Companies, an industry group for private water companies (the majority of Americans are served by public water systems). The formal departure comes just after a 3-2 party-line vote that will undo PJM’s current capacity market and likely cause considerable uncertainty in the PJM market in the short term.

And in case you were completely unplugged under a rock on a remote island for July 4, EPA head Scott Pruitt resigned amid mounting scrutiny of his spending and ethics practices. The new acting head of the EPA is former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler, who is unlikely to change course from Pruitt’s agenda. For an exclusive, in-depth interview with Mandy Gunasekara, principal deputy assistant administrator at the EPA Office of Air and Radiation, about the EPA's priorities following Pruitt's departure, listen to the latest episode of GTM's newest podcast, Political Climate.

Also, ICYMI, Tesla’s engineering chief Doug Field will not come back from a personal leave, according to the Wall St. Journal. A few months ago Field told his team to “prove the haters wrong” as Model 3 production fell short of its mark. Tesla was able to scale up to 5,000 Model 3s per week, but many people are skeptical of whether that can continue. This is just the latest in a steady churn of executives at Tesla.

Solar tracking firm Array Technologies has introduced Jim Fusaro as the company’s new CEO. He will take over Array’s founder Ron Corio. Fusaro was most recently at Avnet and Honeywell before that.

Javier Cavada Camino, the outgoing president of the power division and EVP of Wärtsilä, is now president and CEO at Highview Power, a company commercializing a long-duration bulk liquid air energy storage concept intended to have capacities in the hundreds of megawatt-hours per plant. He will drive the company’s 10-year global expansion plan.

Also in the world of storage, Engie Storage (formerly Green Charge) has brought on Marc Roper as CCO. He has had previous roles with Alta Energy, Sovereign Modular, and CODA Energy. He’ll be focusing on developing channel enablement and driving revenue growth for both behind- and in-front-of-the-meter businesses.

Canadian energy storage firm Eguana Technologies has hired Livio Filice as director of residential sales for North America. Filice comes from Mercedes-Benz Energy and was previously with Sonnen.

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Enertech Search Partners, a boutique talent acquisition and advisory firm focused exclusively on the intersection of the new energy economy and connected industries, is the sponsor of the GTM jobs column.

Among its many active searches, Enertech has been exclusively engaged to find a regional territory utility manager in smart resources.

The client is a predictive analytics solution for utilities, which solves challenges around asset health/maintenance, storm recovery, and CMI. This is a small but established firm, which recently received additional funding as well as some recent highly visible wins that will take them to the next level. They seek a Regional Territory Utility Manager, a utility solution sales executive who has carried quotas in excess of $1 million dollars to leverage their network of VP level contacts within the IOU and muni/co-op markets. They must also have knowledge of T&D, asset management, GIS, or OMS sales to drive and build relationships with prospects and customers to close complex sale opportunities while mentoring less experienced sales team members.

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Mike Butler, director of solar operations at Duke Energy Renewables, has left the company after 15 years to join TerraForm Power as regional solar operations manager for the East. Brookfield Asset Management bought TerraForm Global and TerraForm Power for approximately $1.7 billion in 2017.

PPL has hired Vijay P. Singh to lead the utility’s efforts with distributed energy resources and to work with Safari Energy, a commercial solar EPC that PPL recently acquired. Singh was most recently executive director of Renewable Energy Development and Energy Storage for NextEra Energy Resources.

James McGinnis has left Mainstream Renewable Capital, where he was founder and CEO, to join PJ Solomon as managing director of the firm’s Infrastructure, Power and Renewables Advisory Group where he will lead its renewables coverage.

Heather Sanders has a new position as director of management consulting with Black & Veatch. She was previously a special advisor to the California Public Utilities Commission working on interconnection issues.

Vivint Solar has brought on Miranda Barnard as VP of marketing to raise the profile of the residential installer. She was previously with Sorenson Media, a technology provider to broadcasters.

Former GTMer Andrew Krulewitz has left Geli where he was director of marketing, strategy and product for Geli to join AAA (well, sort of). He’s not providing roadside assistance; instead he’ll be the manager of autonomous vehicle strategy for A3Ventures, the innovation lab and corporate venture capital division of AAA Northern California, Nevada, and Utah.

Solar installer Sunfinity has a handful of new hires. Richard Grosdidier is the new president of utility scale solar after being at Innogy Renewables for the past two years. Hazen Burford joins Sunfinity from AECOM to be the president of C&I solar, and Dallas Tharpe is now SVP of utility-scale solar for the company.

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