Introducing "Agentic Asset Management" to the utility-scale solar and energy storage industry with Proximal Energy's AI-first software team.

As an Expert-in-Residence at BRITE, Rob advises startups on pitching, financial projections and go-to-market strategies. He enjoys helping entrepreneurs pinpoint the true value of their product/service and craft their story so they can determine an effective sales process and raise money from investors. Being an entrepreneur himself, Rob likes to thoroughly understand the context in which his mentee startups operate, analyzing everything from competitive landscape to customer profiles. His background is in solar, energy storage and data analytics, and has experience commercializing machine learning applications, so he can provide actionable insights on bringing software and hardware solutions to market in the energy space.

Consulted renewable energy/storage developers to apply ML/AI in their business processes. Worked on: - electricity market trading: AI-powered virtual trading on nodal DA/RT spreads. Created the business plan, financial projections, hiring plan and ran trading backtests on CAISO.- asset management: outage detection & predictive maintenance- identifying plots of land nearby current and future (planned) substations for solar/storage development- techno-economic solar/storage project finance modeling

At Prophit.ai, we develop machine learning technology for sales and use tax decision making. Our technology reduces the time needed for reverse audits by 50x and helps maintain tax compliance in the future without the need for further reverse audits.Visit us at https://prophit.ai/

Developed PV + Storage (PVS) product/service offering and created a techno-economic model that is used for sizing optimization of PV and battery capacity based on utilities' specific needs. Pitched the novel concept to dozens of utilities across the US and presented the 'Target Period Capacity Factor' framework in industry conferences. Developed a thorough technical understanding of battery performance and degradation, as well as their capex/opex cost and warranty implications. Worked closely with many teams throughout First Solar to integrate PVS into the company, and learned about the utility-scale project development process, including Project Finance, Energy Prediction, Engineering Design, O&M, Legal, and Taxes. Submitted several proposals to U.S. utilities with different types of deal structures for PVS, competing head-to-head with fossil fuel based alternatives - and won!

Investigated the concept of “PVS” (PV + Storage) by identifying and quantifying the potential cost synergies and revenue streams that can be unlocked by co-locating utility-scale PV and batteries on the same site. Developed models for: storage technology LCOE benchmarking, PVS pricing and cost entitlement forward curves. Presented the value proposition of PVS to C-suite and Board Members and subsequently iterated on the product configuration and main value propositions with several big U.S. utilities and IPPs.

Investigated solar PV output variability and forecasting measures in the Advanced Plant Controls team.

Divvy's mission is: To enable communities to crowdfund for sustainable solutionsOur company does this by providing a comprehensive platform (divvygreen.com) that: 1) seamlessly connects project initiators to local developers and 2) provides an engaging crowdfunding interface where funders VISUALLY leave their footprint on the project.

CoverrMe.com is a 'visual crowdfunding' platform for personal fundraising campaigns. It allows campaign creators to upload a collage of pictures that become visible as people contribute to the project. Other than competitor platforms, it has 0% platform fees. Rob designed and coded the platform from scratch and incorporated CoverrMe, Inc. in 2016.

“Utility scale photovoltaic plant variability studies and energy storage optimization for ramp rate control”; under supervision of Prof. Dr. Vasilis Fthenakis, in collaboration with First Solar – 4 publications with >140 citations. While conducting his research, Rob started Solar Journey USA (.com), a zero-emission cross-country trip with the goal to educate the American people on the synergy between solar energy and electric cars. Together with a fellow Ph.D. candidate, he fundraised for - designed and built a mobile EV charging station.

Coursework: 4.13 GPA – Thesis: “LCA comparison of windrow composting of yard wastes with use as alternative daily cover (ADC)”.Other publications: “State-of-Garbage 2008 & 2010” National Waste Management Survey (>100 citations).