Director

Jeff Pierson

Senior Vice President

Prudent Energy Corporation

Jeff Pierson is the Senior Vice President and Secretary/Treasurer of Prudent Energy Corporation, an advanced energy storage company located in Bethesda, Maryland.  He is responsible for Prudent Energy’s day-to-day business and financial operations while overseeing U.S. sales and marketing, government relations, and strategic alliances.  Jeff has over 20 years of experience in energy and power, venture capital, general management, and public service.  He previously held senior executive positions as: Managing Partner at ALTEC Energy Ventures, LLC, a U.S. technology development and investment firm; Associate Administrator for Investment at the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), where he led the $26 billion Small Business Investment Company (SBIC) program and served on the SBA Management Board; and Director of Power Generation Applications and Board Member at ALM Turbine, Inc.  Jeff has also worked on a wide range of energy policy and regulatory issues while serving in the International Energy Agency, the White House, and the U.S. Congress.  Jeff received his B.A. from Emory University and completed graduate work in International Business and Finance at the Fletcher School at Tufts University.

Director

Jim McDowall

Business Development Manager

Saft America, Inc.

Jim McDowall has worked in the battery industry since 1977 and is currently in the position of Business Development Manager with Saft’s Energy Storage Business Unit. He is a current member and former Chair of the board of directors of the Electricity Storage Association and has been helping to develop the energy storage market since 1998. Jim is also very active in standards work and is currently the Standards Coordinator of the IEEE Stationary Battery Committee and Chair of three of its working groups, as well as being a former Chair of the parent committee. He is a member of the Battcon Technical Committee and has written or co-written numerous technical papers.

Vice-Chairman

Rick Winter

Founder and CTO

Primus Power Corporation

I have been actively engaged in grid storage for 20 years and have had the opportunity to work in both the utility and battery manufacturing industries.  I am now founder and CTO of Primus Power, an advanced battery company focused on deploying a 25MW/75MWh battery in Modesto California. The battery is a utility-scale, flow battery that is 100% invented, developed and sourced in the United States.  My background experience ranges from managing PG&E’s Storage Technologies Program, to designing and operating remote area power supply systems. I have served as an industry expert to the DOE for multiple years.  I have a keen interest in field deployments with strong value propositions. I have tested grid impacts of distributed generation systems including batteries, flywheels, microturbines, PV, and diesels.

Director

Rahul Walawalkar

Vice President, Emerging Technologies and Markets

Customized Energy Solutions

Dr. Rahul Walawalkar leads the Emerging Technologies & Markets practice for Customized Energy Solutions with focus on energy storage, renewables, demand response and smart grid technologies as well as international markets. He is an internationally acclaimed expert in areas covering energy management, electricity markets, emerging technologies and new product development. Rahul has been involved in evaluating economics of emerging technologies since 2004. His research and consulting activities have covered complete range of demand response and energy storage technologies including CAES, Pumped Hydro, NAS, flow batteries, Lithium Ion batteries, thermal storage and flywheels.  Rahul currently serves on the Board of Directors of Electricity Storage Association. He is also a steering committee member for the international Energy Storage Challenge. He has served as expert on evaluation panels for US DOE’s various smart grid projects and is involved in creation of industry standards as part of IEEE and NIST working groups. Rahul holds a Ph.D. in Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University. He also holds Masters in Energy Management from New York Institute of Technology and undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from Walchand College of Engineering.  He is recipient of numerous awards including Computer Society of India’s Young IT Professional Award (2000 & 2001), Demonstration of Energy Efficiency Developments scholarship from American Public Power Association (2002, 2003 & 2005) and is also recognized as one of the Legends in Energy by Association of Energy Engineers.

Treasurer

Georgianne Huff

Principal Member of Technical Staff

Sandia National Laboratories

Georgianne is responsible for providing program and technical project management for the DOE Electrical Energy Storage Program at Sandia National Laboratories.  Georgianne has worked for Sandia for 25 years and in her current role has contributed to the energy storage industry for the past 8 years publishing several papers and presenting several forums.  Prior to that she worked in construction management and was responsible for the over-all design and construction of multi-million dollar facilities.  She earned a BSME from New Mexico State University and is a registered Professional Mechanical Engineer and a Project Management Professional.  Georgianne is currently serving as Treasurer on the Board of Directors for the international Electricity Storage Association.

Director

Robert Misback

Senior Director, Energy Storage Solutions

Altairnano, Inc.

Robert Misback is a Senior Director of Energy Storage Solutions with Altairnano, Inc.  He has twenty years of experience within the utility sector and a deep expertise in conventional, wind, and solar power. Prior to joining Altairnano, Mr. Misback served as a Director of Energy Business Segment with Converteam, Inc., a global market leader in power systems for energy markets. Mr. Misback established Converteam as a supplier to the conventional and renewable power industry in North America.  Prior to his tenure at Converteam, Mr. Misback was VP and General Manager of Acciona Solar Power and Director of Gas Turbine Service at Siemens Power Generation.  Mr. Misback graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a degree in mechanical engineering and also earned a MBA from Crummer School of Business. He is a member of PMI and a Project Management Professional.

Vice-Chairman

Matt Lazarewicz

Chief Technical Officer

Beacon Power Corporation

Mr. Lazarewicz has been with Beacon Power Corp. for 11 years where he serves as Vice President & Chief Technical Officer. Prior to joining Beacon Power, Mr. Lazarewicz worked for 25 years for General Electric in various engineering and managerial capacities in Power Systems and Aircraft Engines.  He is a Mechanical Engineer and holds BS, MS, and MBA degrees from MIT.  He is also a Registered Professional Engineer in Massachusetts,  He serves on the Board of Directors of the Electricity Storage Association,  is Chairman of the Energy Storage Working Group of the Distributed Generation and Energy Storage Sub-Committee, is a member the IEEE Power Engineering Society, ASME , CIGRE, and NEMA’s Energy Storage Council.

Secretary

Eva L. Gardow

Senior Project Manager

FirstEnergy Service Company

Eva L. Gardow is a Senior Project Manager at FirstEnergy.  Her responsibilities include management of strategy, direction and evaluation of energy storage systems and project management of a smart grid, integrated distributed energy resources projects in New Jersey that includes direct load control, distribution line sensors and energy storage technologies.  She is a member of the board of directors of the Electricity Storage Association and provides policy input and program development on new technologies, energy storage, renewables and energy efficiency for the company. Prior to this she managed JC&L’s renewable energy program for the state.  She also assisted in developing new solar power plants, managed the solar electric business of GPU Solar and provided technical guidance for the Ballard Generation Systems fuel cell power plant development.  Previous experience was gained at UTC Fuel Cells, where she worked on developing the design of the 200kW fuel cell power plant and at Stone & Webster Engineering Corp. where she was responsible for the system design and installation integrity at nuclear power plants.  She has a BSME from Clarkson University and an MBA from the University of Hartford.

Director

Darrell Hayslip

President

Narrow Gate Energy, LLC

Darrell Hayslip serves as the President of Narrow Gate Energy, LLC. Mr. Hayslip previsouly served as the Chief Development Officer at Xtreme Power, where he directed all development, sales, and other commercial activities associated with the deployment of Xtreme Power’s utility-scale energy storage technology.  Prior to joining Xtreme Power, Mr. Hayslip worked for EON Climate & Renewables North America as the Senior Vice President of Marketing & Trading.  Mr. Hayslip has many years of experience in the independent power sector, having spent years with Calpine, Dynegy, Destec Energy, and Westinghouse serving in various executive capacities working in power system sales, development, trading & marketing, and other commercial roles.  In addition, he has been very active in the restructuring of the electric utility industry, having served on the Board of Directors of the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the Technical Advisory Committee of ERCOT, the Operating Committee and Market Operation Committee of NERC and has actively chaired several tasks. He has been a member of the GCPA for over 15 years and currently serves as a board member.  Mr. Hayslip holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

Chairman

Chris Shelton

President

AES Energy Storage

As President of AES Energy Storage, LLC, Chris Shelton leads the AES Corporation business unit with 84 MW of advanced energy storage systems in operation and construction and another 500 MW of projects in near-term development. He has over 15 years of technology related development and systems architecture experience and has been a leader in the origination of new business efforts at AES. These efforts include the launch of a retail electricity business where he pioneered the bundling of environmental offsets with customer electricity consumption and began the first AES wind development efforts. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Physics and currently sits on the Board of the Electricity Storage Association.

Director

John Butkowski

Senior Staff Engineer

R.W. Beckett Corporation

My skill set encompasses 40 years in AC/DC power technology with experience in engineering, manufacturing, and management as a visionary and “change agent”.  My current employer, Beckett Energy, is involved in the design and manufacture of scalable energy storage systems for the edge of the grid.

I believe that the technological advances of “global advanced energy” will make it necessary for the ESA to provide an innovative leadership role in the development of energy storage and power conversion technology in the world.

The “disruptiveness” of the technology will require board members to help develop new paradigms and direction to address energy storage and power conversion technology at all levels from the large grid, to the edge of the grid, to residential homes.  As an example, when Edison “invented” electricity that electricity was direct current. Direct current wasn’t feasible due to transmission losses over long distances.  If distributed energy storage is available in the residential neighborhoods at the edge of the grid, direct current will be available “at the curb”. The LED lighting we currently use, newer televisions, computers, variable speed motors in our appliances are powered by DC that has to be converted from AC. Just think of the efficiency improvements if they could operate directly from DC.

Director

Colette Lamontagne

Director

Navigant Consulting, Inc.

Colette Lamontagne is an Associate Director in the Energy Practice at Navigant Consulting. Her current work focuses on emerging energy technology research and development including energy storage and smart grid. Ms. Lamontagne has twenty years of consulting experience focusing primarily on emerging technology demonstrations, industrial energy efficiency, and environmental engineering. Ms. Lamontagne has conducted and provided oversight for numerous lab-, bench-, and pilot-scale technology R&D programs.

Director

Haresh Kamath

Senior Project Manager, Power Delivery and Utilization

EPRI

Haresh Kamath is currently serving a stint as a Strategic Program Manager in EPRI’s Technology Innovation Program, where he manages a program investigating advanced materials technologies for grid transformation.  He is also a Senior Project Manager in the Power Delivery and Utilization (PDU) Sector at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), where his current research activities focus on the development, assessment, and application of energy storage technologies for both transportation and grid storage applications.

Kamath joined EPRI PEAC in 2002 as a project engineer in energy storage and distributed generation. His responsibilities grew to include management of the energy technologies group, encompassing EPRI Solutions efforts in energy storage, distributed generation, energy efficiency, and electric transportation. He was an author for the DOE-EPRI Handbook of Energy Storage and serves on the board of directors of the Electricity Storage Association.

Before joining EPRI, Kamath worked at Lockheed Martin Space Systems as a product engineer responsible for spacecraft batteries. He also served as an applications engineering and business development manager at a startup energy storage company.

Kamath received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in chemical engineering from Stanford University.

Executive Director

Brad Roberts

Power Quality Systems Director

S&C Electric Company, Power Quality Products Division

Brad Roberts is the Power Quality Systems Director for the Power Quality Products Division of S&C Electric Company, which specializes in low- and medium-voltage power protection systems.

Mr. Roberts has over 35 years experience in the design and operation of critical power systems, ranging from single phase UPS systems to medium voltage applications.  He began his engineering work as a systems reliability engineer in the Apollo Lunar Module Program at Cape Kennedy.  He held senior management positions in two of the major UPS manufacturers during his career.  Brad is a senior member of IEEE and has published over 40 technical papers and journal articles on critical power system design and energy storage technology.

Brad is a registered professional engineer and has a BSEE (Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering) degree from the University of Florida.  He is Past-Chairman of the IEEE Power Engineering Society’s Emerging Technologies Committee and Executive Director of the Electricity Storage Association (ESA) and Past Chairman of the Board.  He has been a member of the ESA Board for 12 years.  Mr. Roberts is a member of the US Department of Energy Electricity Advisory Committee and Chairman of the Energy Storage Sub-committee.

Director

Dr. Ali Nourai

Executive Consultant

KEMA

Dr. Ali Nourai, Chairman of ESA Board of Directors, retired from American Electric Power (AEP) in March 2010 after a 30-year utility career. He helped launching AEP’s successful sodium sulfur battery program in 2006 and introduced the concept of the Community Energy Storage (CES) in 2009.

Shortly after his retirement, Dr. Nourai joined KEMA as an Executive Consultant. He explains this move as a necessary step to reach out to other companies and help them with their projects in the field of energy storage that is rapidly growing. KEMA is the industry’s leading consulting company in storage and offers an excellent global platform for him to work on and reach out to utilities and other businesses across all energy storage application areas.