High Impact and Timely Insights from the Research Experts at Clean Edge
The clean-tech marketplace is rapidly changing – making reliable updates on the latest issues and breakthroughs critical. To help subscribers keep abreast of these changes, Clean Edge produces the Clean Tech Nation Briefing Series. Leveraging Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder’s book, Clean Tech Nation, each webinar is designed to highlight real-world lessons, best practices, and key trends.
Click here to learn more about partnering on Briefing Series webinars.
Unleashing Mass Deployment of Energy Storage
Is energy storage The Next Big Thing in clean tech? Long viewed a key component in the significant scale-up of variable renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, storage has moved into the spotlight as a notable business and investment opportunity. With California’s recent mandate of 1.3 gigawatts of new storage by 2020 and notable utility-scale storage projects being deployed across the U.S. and globally, storage is increasingly a top-of-mind topic for energy entrepreneurs, executives, investors, and regulators.
Please join us on June 10 for a lively, interactive conversation covering the latest developments in energy storage, including breakthroughs in a range of competing storage technologies; the continual battle to reduce storage costs; regulatory mandates; the potential business model disruptions from distributed storage, and more.
Speaker Bios:
Bob Rudd
Director of Project Development Energy Storage
Solar City
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Bob Rudd is the Director of Project Development for SolarCity’s Energy Storage business unit. He is responsible for all development, marketing, and sales efforts related to battery projects throughout the U.S. and abroad. Bob has been with SolarCity for more than two years and brings a cumulative seven years of experience working in the solar PV industry. In that time Bob has been personally developed or closed on more than 30MW of PV projects throughout North America. For these projects, Bob’s responsibilities have varied across every phase of a project’s development including land acquisition, interconnection, contract negotiations, project financing, and construction.
Prior to joining SolarCity, Bob was the Manager of Utility Projects at Sharp Electronics, a $34 billion multi-national solar PV manufacturer. While at Sharp Bob personally managed the acquisition, financing, construction, and interconnection of a 14 MW ground-mounted PV array in Ontario, Canada. Bob later managed the structuring of a Purchase and Sale Agreement for this project valued at approximately $65 million. In addition to utility-scale projects, Bob has implemented more than 10 MW of commercial solar installations in both the public and private sectors.
Bob earned a B.S. in Finance from the University of Colorado at Boulder and was an NCAA Division I Swimmer.
Robert Fleishman
Senior Of Counsel
Morrison & Foerster LLP
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Robert Fleishman is Senior Of Counsel in Morrison & Foerster’s litigation department, resident in the Washington, D.C. office. Fleishman has a leading reputation in defending energy and financial industry participants in the energy markets against charges of market manipulation, particularly before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and other regulatory bodies. His deep knowledge of the electric and gas regulatory and enforcement landscape informs his representation of clients on energy regulatory, enforcement, compliance, transactional, commercial, legislative, and public policy matters and activities.
He has been recognized for his expertise in energy regulatory law by Chambers USA (2010-2013), Best Lawyers in America, Energy (2007-2014), and Legal 500 US (2008-2010; 2012-2013). Mr. Fleishman also received the Center for the Advancement of Energy Markets Service Award (2005). Mr. Fleishman currently serves as editor in chief of the Energy Law Journal, the preeminent journal in the field of energy law, with approximately 3,000 subscribers in the United States and 15 foreign countries. Fleishman joined Morrison & Foerster in 2013 from Covington & Burling LLP. Prior to Covington, he worked in the Enforcement Division at FERC, before serving at Constellation Energy Group where he led the company's efforts to develop and coordinate legislative and regulatory policy at the federal, state and local levels. Mr. Fleishman earned his J.D. from Boston University School of Law.
Conrad Eustis
Director of Retail Technology Strategy
Portland General Electric
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Conrad Eustis has 38 years of experience in the energy industry, including work on nuclear submarines and 28 years at Portland General Electric, the electric utility serving more than 800,000 customers across a 4,000-square mile service area in Northwest Oregon. For the past 20 years, he has helped implement more than 20 new technology platforms to enable both utility and customer benefits in the smart grid areas of metering, demand response, and integration of renewable generation. From 2009 to 2011, he supported Portland State University’s course Designing Smart Grid for Sustainable Communities as Adjunct Professor. In 2010, he testified on smart grid standards to the U.S. House Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation. Eustis holds technical degrees from Carnegie-Mellon and Brown Universities.
Tom Stepien
CEO
Primus Power
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Tom Stepien is CEO of Primus Power, a leader in grid-scale electrical energy storage. He helped launch Primus Power in 2009 and has raised over $50 million from venture capital sources, strategic investors and government grants. He has over 30 years of engineering, operations and general management experience at small and large companies.
Prior to joining Primus, Tom was a Vice President and General Manager at Applied Materials, a Fortune 500 provider of semiconductor, solar and flat panel display equipment and services. He had P&L responsibility for a $500M business unit with complex set of systems, global customers, manufacturing and support.
He has expertise in software, industrial robotics and control systems having lead efforts at Applied, Novellus Systems and Draper Laboratory. He holds a BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering from MIT where he was a Pi Tau Sigma, Bendix and Alpha Tau Omega Scholar. He currently serves on industrial advisory board for the MIT’s Laboratory for Manufacturing & Productivity.
Tom was a co-captain and three year letterman for the MIT Varsity Crew Team. He was born & raised in Detroit, Michigan and currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. He enjoys mechanical tinkering, photography and golf. He serves on the Northern California board of Special Olympics and as a teenager was a camp counselor for special needs kids.
About Primus Power: Primus Power is a leader in low-cost, grid-scale energy storage solutions with a scalable, distributed, multi-hour system that economically serves multiple storage applications. With 15 patented innovations in chemistry, cell design and system engineering, the Company’s EnergyPod® products offer exceptional power density, reliability and portability at industry-low prices.
Primus is the only company to receive government grants from the U.S. Department of Energy, the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E), the California Energy Commission, and the Bonneville Power Administration. Its technology stands to revolutionize the economics, stability and security of the electric grid, while accelerating the integration of renewable wind and solar energy.
Clint Wilder
Senior Editor
Clean Edge
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Clint Wilder is Clean Edge's senior editor, a blogger about clean-tech issues for the Green section of The Huffington Post, and co-author of Clean Tech Nation and The Clean Tech Revolution (both with Ron Pernick). E-mail him at wilder@cleanedge.com and follow him on Twitter at @Clint_Wilder.
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Learn More
To find out more about the Clean Tech Nation Briefing Series content and sponsorship, please contact:
Bryce Yonker
Director, Business Development
yonker@cleanedge.com
503.206.8448
Robert Fleishman
Conrad Eustis 
Tom Stepien 
Clint Wilder 