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As a child, Mathew Sachs was captivated by environmental issues like the thinning ozone layer over Antarctica. But he never envisioned it as a career path.
Still, when given the opportunity to take a role scaling one of the early solar panel manufacturing companies’ entry into the US market, he embraced solar for the simplest reason: "I thought it was a good business poised to grow for a lot of the right reasons," he said. "I wish I could tell you I was interested in solar because I wanted to contribute to the cause, but that wasn't the case."
As it turns out, Mathew has contributed quite a bit to the quest for clean energy. Now a seasoned green-tech executive with more than fifteen years of experience in investments, sales and operational strategy, he's exceptionally well versed in all-things-solar, but also in the exciting and booming segment referred to as Distributed Energy Resources (DERs).
DER has been defined by many entities (including way back in 2002 by NREL!), but I prefer the SEPA definition circa 2017: DERs are physical and virtual assets that are deployed across the distribution grid, typically close to load, and usually behind the meter, which can be used individually or in aggregate to provide value to the grid, individual customers, or both.
Distributed energy encompasses a range of technologies, including fuel cells, microturbines, reciprocating engines, load reduction, and other energy management technologies. DER also involves power electronic interfaces, communications, and control devices for efficient dispatch and operation of generating units and aggregated power blocks.
Mathew is senior vice president of strategic planning and business development at CPower Energy Management. Better known as CPower, the Baltimore-based company is a leading provider of commercial and industrial demand-side energy management programs.
Last month CPower entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the US demand response division of Centrica Business Solutions, an integrated energy solutions company focused on commercial and industrial load management. The buy positions CPower as the US leader in providing grid flexibility and reliability through customer-powered DER, now with 6.3 GW at over 17,000 sites.
"6.3 GW of clean and green power!" Mathew shared on LinkedIn. "Great things ahead."
For context for those outside the electricity sector, 6.3 GW is about half the power needed to supply the greater New York City area during peak usage.
Matthew has deep experience developing and implementing distributed and renewable growth strategies that leverage technological advances in solar, energy storage, intelligent software and other DERs.
Before joining CPower in 2019, he held executive roles at National Grid Ventures, KRoad DG and Yingli Green Energy in positions spanning strategy, business development and inorganic growth through investment, partnerships and acquisitions.
Mathew likes solving puzzles, a skill well aligned with his interest in building and investing in new businesses. His early career "was much more focused on finding something to build and creating than on the environmental part, but that certainly came later."
He traces his career pivot to solar to a long-term friendship with Robert Petrina, a solar industry veteran with nearly two decades of international business development experience in the PV industry. Robert was responsible for GE's global silicon procurement — an essential component of solar cells — before joining Yingli Green Energy Americas in 2007. He brought Mathew into the company in 2009.
"I'm certainly indebted to what he taught me in my early years here. Robert is a name we don't often talk about in solar who's done a lot for our sector. He's brought in a lot of good people and taught a lot of folks the way," Mathew said.
Mathew described "quite a journey" across the past 13 years, solving challenges and forging partnerships with industry leaders like Sunrun.
“Make no mistake. In all of these jobs, I’ve stood on the shoulders of giants,”
Mathew said he always tries to focus on the fundamentals by asking, "What are the customer needs, and what problem are we solving?"
He’s proud of his work at CPower, noting that customer retention rates are “sky high, which is great.” But the most common way the company measures it’s customer experience success is through the Net Promoter Score, a metric that assesses the willingness of customers to recommend a company's products or services to other people.
Today Mathew shares his experiences and explains how CPower monetizes the value of its customers' DER. "What we mean by DER is any device or asset that generates, consumes or stores electricity that can respond to a signal. So, anything could be a DER if enabled with the right technology. Typically, it should be within the distribution network," he said.
CPower focuses behind the meter, that is, on the customer side of the meter.
Want to hear more? Tune into today's podcast. We’ve put together a really interesting show. Mathew explains his favorite new climate tech product (spoiler alert, it’s blipOne, which plugs into a standard outlet and provides 2.2KWh of backup power in case of an outage).
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