Michael Groesch Email & Phone Number

Portland, Or, Us

Portland, Or, Us

Southborough, Massachusetts, Us

Upstart Power designs and produces market disruptive solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) generators that are dependable, sustainable, carbon efficient and virtually silent for Residential and Industrial applications. The Upgen™ Power system from Upstart Power works collaboratively with intermittent renewable sources like solar and battery storage and will ‘cycle on’ when other sources are unavailable, providing 24-7-365, long-duration backup power generation.

Atrex Energy produced SOFC Fuel Cells for remote grid independent power deployments. Able to tolerate temperatures from -40 to 80C sites were deployed to run on Propane and Natural Gas in conjunction with onsite solar and storage to provide reliable continuous power to critical sensing and communication installations. Deployments included Cell Towers, Atmospheric sensing and wellhead power applications.

• Managed infrastructure and hardware implementation to expand first generation test station capacity by twofold• Developed standard baseline and performance testing to enable cross platform and technology comparison of thin film SOFC cell technologies. Database to enable searchable data for test comparison was being established• Designed and commissioned 2nd generation test station with comparable performance at 1/10th the cost of existing commercial test stations• Improved lab testing infrastructure to include UPS, automated gas changeover, combustible gas shutoff to allow for longer endurance testing without interruption while maintaining safe operation • Wrote and deployed Mann-Whitney automated statistics tool to enable rigorous data comparison between non-normally distributed populations

San Jose, California, Us

• Developed 3D topography specifications, visualization and processing routines using 3rd Party line and point laser scanning platforms on a part down to the micron level for the surfaces measured• Utilized statistical and failure mode analysis to develop and refine functional Critical to Quality Topography specifications correlated to SOFC performance and to mitigate suspected failure modes• Characterized topography tool tolerances through Gage R&R study to determine realistic measurement limits to design specifications

San Jose, California, Us

• Led a technical team that improved Fuel Cell manufacturing yield from 70% to 80% through both screening and response DOE’s on internal process parameters• Utilized statistical genealogy analysis and failed component autopsy characterization to develop, test and drive design changes to improve yield to 92%• Invented and implemented specific design improvements to minimize the effect of internal process variation on full stack assembly• Fully qualified OEM vendor for manufacturing through First Article and PPAP processes (including spec and drawing negotiation) with equivalent manufacturing yields and an estimated cost savings of $6 million over a full year

San Jose, California, Us

• Technically coordinated with powdered metallurgy vendors to improve basic functionality of critical fuel cell interconnect leading to density, permeability and CTE related enhancements • Employed statistical process control monitoring of KPIV / KPOV at vendors to reduce part to part variability by greater than 20% and prevent process excursions through weekly review• Benchmark tested SOFC stacks then scripted Electrochemical grader for new platform of fuel cell technology using Visual Basic• Managed reduction in out of spec inventory to allow recovery of ½ million dollars of suspect inventory without any reduction in manufacturing yields

San Jose, California, Us

• Installed and monitored standard and custom electrochemical characterization experiments on SOFC stacks using Labview based Test Stations • Developed accelerated stress testing protocols to reduce testing time by 1000s of hours and confirmed the results matched existing failure modes• Trained as Site Administrator for data historian (IP21), including new equipment setup and automated SQL outage monitoring routines reducing to zero the number of data outages greater than 24 hours on over 100 continuously running test stations.• Reverse Engineered, documented and improved single cell test stations electrical and P&ID to standardize station to station variation and improve station reliability by 12%• Debugged problematic test station components including Thermal Couples, Mass Flow Controllers, Gas Humidifiers and Reformer vessels and control hardware and I/O

Everett, Wa, Us

• Took responsibility for 4 IR Thermal Imaging ‘Lean manufacturing’ lines monitoring quality, productivity, individual Point of Assurance and overall yields • Utilized Fault Tree and Pareto analysis to drive component level improvements taking 7 step Roll Throughput Yields from 55 to 70% on flagship product line • Worked with Kaizen Continuous Improvement Process tools to streamline material flow and optimize soldering fixture to decrease TAKT time by 8%