solar summit 2014

The 'Can't-Miss' Solar Event of the Year!

Underpinned by GTM Research analytics and forecasting, Greentech Media's Solar Summit attracts leaders from across the solar value chain. The agenda encompasses the entire breadth of the solar market from manufacturing and technology to demand and project finance in the U.S. and global markets. Now in its seventh year, the Solar Summit offers unrivaled networking opportunities and innovative, engaging panel sessions to provide a unique mix of market intelligence and coordination among industry players.

Speakers

Tom Doyle

President and CEO, NRG Solar

Doyle is the President and CEO of NRG Solar and an Executive Vice President at NRG Energy. Doyle was instrumental in building NRG Solar into the largest solar company in the country from an equity ownership perspective. He transitioned the company from a start-up utility-solar development company into one of the most diverse solar companies in the business focused on both utility and distributed solar. In addition, Doyle brought engineering, procurement, construction and manufacturing into NRG Solar in order to meet his objective of best-in-market installed cost.

Joining NRG in 2009 as President of NRG Solar, Doyle has more than 25 years of domestic and international energy industry experience that includes engineering design, development, asset management, M&A, and substantial P&L ownership. As Executive Vice President of Global Development at BrightSource Energy Inc., he led efforts to secure one of the largest portfolios of power purchase agreements in the solar industry and has also held senior management positions with InterGen and Foster Wheeler Energy Corp. He holds an MBA and a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Arizona.

Raffi Garabedian

Chief Technology Officer, First Solar

Raffi Garabedian joined First Solar in May 2008 as Director of Disruptive Technologies and was promoted to his current role in 2012. Prior to First solar, he spent over 15 years in the micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) industry, developing new products ranging from automotive engine control sensors to fiber-optic telecommunications switching systems. He was the founding CEO of Touchdown Technologies, Inc., which was acquired by Verigy, as well as Micromachines Inc., which was acquired by Kavlico. Mr. Garabedian earned a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a Master of Science degree in electrical engineering with a focus on semiconductor and microsystems technology from the University of California-Davis. He is named on approximately 28 issued U.S. patents.

Howard Wenger

President, Business Units, SunPower

Howard Wenger serves as SunPower president, business units, with global responsibility for the company’s residential, commercial and utility power plant business. He is currently focused on leading the company’s evolution to become a customer-centric energy company, combining distributed generation and energy services. Wenger also serves as president of SunPower Corporation, Systems, the company’s turn-key power systems group. Previously, he was executive vice president and a member of the board of PowerLight Corporation, which was acquired by SunPower, and he held management positions at PG&E, AstroPower and Pacific Energy Group, a company he co-founded. Wenger is passionate about making the sun the leading source of energy globally. He has worked for more than 30 years in the solar and utility power field, authored dozens of papers and public policies to mainstream solar, and developed software programs and tools that are still used today to design and engineer solar power systems. Wenger holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an M.S. in Engineering from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and currently serves as a board member of Advanced Energy Economy.

Tanguy Serra

Chief Strategy Officer, Loanpal

As Chief Strategy Officer, Tanguay leads the Loanpal innovation group, identifying new business opportunities and market growth potential by leveraging new technology, and optimizing advancements in the consumer leading platform.

Prior to Loanpal, Tanguay served as President of Solar City – in the largest residential solar company in the world, overseeing 10,000 employees. At SolarCity, he led operations alongside Hayes Barnard and helped grow the business 5x to 40% of market share (10 times the size of the nearest competitor). Additionally, this growth was achieved with the best safety and quality track record, and lowest cost structure.

Additionally, Tanguy co-founded Vivint Solar, a residential solar provider that quickly became the 2nd largest in the market. Tanguy also spent 3 years in investment banking at Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, London, and also served 8 years as Vice President of the private equity group at TPG in London, Singapore, Hong Kong and San Francisco.

Mark McLanahan

President of Global Services, SunEdison

Mr. McLanahan is the President of Global Services for SunEdison. Global Services provides comprehensive Asset Management and O&M services to PV owners around the world. The portfolio of assets under management currently exceeds 1,900MW. Mr. McLanahan was one of the original founders of the solar development company Renewable Ventures in 2005, which became FRV US and was acquired by SunEdison in the third quarter of 2011. Mr. McLanahan was responsible for sourcing, negotiating, and closing external solar project opportunities for the company to complement internal development activities. Previously, Mr. McLanahan was at Gap Inc. for seven years in corporate finance. Prior to that, he was on the EMEA financial planning team for Compaq Computer in Munich, Germany. He has more than ten years of business planning experience in corporate and startup environments. Mr. McLanahan has a Masters Degree from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and an undergraduate degree in International Business from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Diana Drysdale

President, PSEG Power Ventures

Diana L. Drysdale was named Vice President - Renewables of PSEG Energy Holdings in January 2010. Since joining the company in 2008, she has been responsible for the strategic growth and operations of PSEG’s unregulated solar subsidiary which includes both development and acquisition of a number of utility scale solar facilities across the country. Ms. Drysdale was named President of PSEG Solar Source in September 2011.

In April 2011, Ms. Drysdale was named Vice President of PSEG Resources, where she assumed responsibility for PSEG Resources’ real estate portfolio of headquarters buildings, multi-tenant office buildings, shopping centers, and single stores located throughout the US which includes 46 properties totaling more than 7.5 million square feet. In this capacity she is responsible for ongoing management and strategic optimization of the portfolio including asset dispositions. She also assumed the lead of Resources’ environmental assets, primarily the Demand Management Company (energy conservation assets) and a co-investment in a flue gas desulphurization plant.

Ms. Drysdale brings broad experience in the energy and utilities sector in both regulated and unregulated businesses in the US and Canada. Before joining PSEG, Ms. Drysdale led the Enterprise Risk Management efforts at Limited Brands and prior to that at Northeast Utilities where she delivered a highly effective integrated ERM framework for both the regulated and unregulated energy businesses. She worked for seven years with ENMAX Corporation in Calgary, Canada where she held the positions of Vice President of Strategy and Risk Management and Vice President and Treasurer. At ENMAX she played a key role in the successful growth and operations of the company which included a number of renewable energy endeavors. Ms. Drysdale also worked for TransAlta Corporation in Calgary, Canada for seven years in various engineering and management roles which included significant experience with the company’s generation plants.

Ms. Drysdale holds a Bachelors degree in chemical engineering from the University of Calgary in Alberta Canada; an MBA from Queen's School of Business in Ontario, Canada; and has completed the Finance for Senior Executives program from Harvard Business School. Since 1993, she has been a licensed professional engineer with the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists, and Geophysicists of Alberta. She has served on several boards in both the US and Canada and has been a member of the Bloomfield College Board of Trustees in New Jersey since 2008 and the G.I. Go Fund Board of Directors since 2011.

Minh Le

Director, Solar Energy Technologies Office, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)

Minh Le is the Director of the Solar Energy Technologies Office within the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), where he helps manage and balance a roughly $1B multi-year portfolio of research, development, demonstration, and deployment programs to achieve the goals of the SunShot Initiative. The DOE SunShot Initiative is a collaborative national initiative to make solar energy technologies fully cost-competitive with other forms of energy by reducing the cost of solar energy systems by about 75% before 2020. Reducing the total installed cost for utility-scale solar electricity to roughly 6 cents per kilowatt hour without subsidies will result in rapid, large-scale adoption of solar electricity across the United States. Prior to his current role at the DOE, Minh spent his career in the semiconductor and solar industry developing technologies and scaling new technologies to high volume manufacturing. Minh earned his B.S. and M.S. degrees from MIT, where he held fellowships with DOE, the Department of Defense, and the Bose Foundation.

Paul Nahi

CEO, Enphase Energy

Paul has over 20 years experience in both entrepreneurial and multinational high technology companies. Most recently, Paul was the CEO of Crimson Microsystems, a fabless semiconductor company specializing in large scale SONET ICs for the telecommunications industry, with customers worldwide. Prior to Crimson, Paul was the CEO and co-founder of Accelerant Networks, a semiconductor company that designed and developed intelligent multi-gigabit transceivers. Accelerant was acquired by Synopsis, Inc (Nasdaq: SNPS). Paul has a B.S. in Computer Science and an M.B.A. from the University of Southern California.

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