clean-energy
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Sungage Financial found solar’s missing piece.
The panels worked. The financing didn’t. Sungage Financial grew from one homeowner’s frustration into a business that puts solar ownership within reach - one installer, one loan, one roof at a time.
The business of asking: how do you know?
Various publications & books points to David H. Freedman’s working life: five books and a reporting career spent examining science, technology, and the people who promise to explain them.
Josh Goldberg and the trouble with a perfectly good roof
He left corporate law to sell solar, then kept finding the same obstacle between a willing customer and an empty roof. At Sunstone Credit, Josh Goldberg is making a business out of getting the money to move.
Peter Frischmann and the Problem with Being Early
The Sepion co-founder wanted his chemistry to reach the world sooner. Battery makers taught him that getting there would mean changing the product, the business, and himself.
George Lee and the hours hiding in a parking space
A Caltech volunteer helped turn parked cars into a business in managed electricity. After PowerFlex’s acquisition, George Lee’s work has come back to a familiar scale: the charger down the road.
James McWalter and the trouble with a perfectly good field
An Irish farm, a philosophy degree, and a thousand LinkedIn approaches led James McWalter to an overlooked energy problem: deciding where anything can actually get built.
Eric Lander and the art of starting over
He helped read the human genome. Now Eric Lander is trying to build fusion power, bringing a mathematician’s habits and an institution builder’s address book to a machine that still has to prove itself.
Kunal Girotra and the case for a less interesting electricity bill
After helping lead Tesla’s energy business, Kunal Girotra founded Lunar Energy to make the electric home easier to live with. His bet begins with a battery and ends with a house that knows when to share.
Pat Reilly and the price of being heard
After two decades helping other people make their case, Pat Reilly co-founded a polling company with a cheaper way to listen. Her career connects campaign press rooms, Silicon Valley and the practical business of getting people into the same room.
Abhay Gupta and the mystery of the electricity bill
He helped build smart meters. Then he co-founded Bidgely to make sense of what they were saying. Abhay Gupta’s long bet is that a more useful electricity bill can change what happens on both sides of the meter.
SIIC makes room for the hard part
A ventilator built in 90 days reveals what IIT Kanpur’s incubator really supplies: the people, tools and patient support between an invention and a customer.
Voltus: The power of using less
A factory can earn money by pausing. A building can earn it by cooling differently. Voltus bundles those small acts of flexibility into something the electricity grid will pay for.
Intersect puts the power next door
Google bought Intersect to bring electricity and computing closer together. Its bet: the next constraint on AI can be solved with land, batteries, and a much shorter journey for power.
Alexandra Rasch Castillo and the power behind a phone call
A Guatemalan tennis player became a battery engineer, then co-founded Caban. Her next assignment: making the machinery behind a phone call less dependent on diesel and more dependable when the grid fails.
Maria Pope and the trouble with an ordinary light switch
A banker became a power operator, then took charge of Portland General Electric. Maria Pope’s next assignment is to make a changing electricity system feel dependable to the people paying for it.
Sunrun’s next power plant is your house
Sunrun made rooftop solar a monthly payment. Now it is connecting home batteries into power plants, turning a household backup plan into something the whole grid can use.
Lee Taylor and the price of an uncertain future
He sold a share of his future income to get REsurety started. Now Lee Taylor is building a market for an equally awkward asset: electricity that arrives with the weather.
Jimmy Rojas and the art of making hydrogen ordinary
A childhood fascination with an astronaut took Jimmy Rojas from Costa Rica to MIT. At EVOLOH, the engineer is pursuing a more terrestrial ambition: hydrogen equipment that factories can afford to make, buy and run.
Christopher Hopper and the Seven-Month Problem
A school roof in Kenya sent Christopher Hopper down an unexpected path: building software for the work that happens before the panels go up. The Aurora Solar co-founder’s story runs from village electrification to a company used to design millions of solar projects.
Fluence is buying the grid some time
A battery can move electricity from noon to night. Fluence is building the hardware, software, and service business around that simple trick - while learning how expensive a late delivery can be.
CF Industries bets on the molecule it knows
CF Industries built its business feeding crops. Its next bet asks whether the same molecule can help cut industrial emissions - and whether the numbers will add up.
Xcel Energy and the art of keeping the lights on
At a Minnesota coal plant, solar panels and sheep reveal the practical side of Xcel Energy’s clean-energy transition. The hard part is rebuilding the system while everyone is still using it.
Edison International and the weight of a wire
California wants more of life to run on electricity. Edison International has to make the wires ready - and reckon with the consequences when the system falls short.
First Solar took a different element.
Most solar manufacturers chose silicon. First Solar chose cadmium telluride - and built a business around controlling what happens between a sheet of glass and a working power plant.
Steve McBee’s second theory of power
He built the firm that became Signal Group, then left Washington to change the energy business. Now Steve McBee is asking why an industry with commercial momentum still struggles to organize political power.
Kirk Brown and the case for showing up
From Iowa caucus season to electric-car test drives, the REACH Strategies founder has kept returning to a practical question: what happens when people get to try the future for themselves?
Vikram Aggarwal and the price of a little clarity
A quiet house powered by sunshine caught his imagination. The confusing business of buying solar gave the EnergySage founder his work.
Pedro Pizarro and the trouble with a simple equation
A chemistry PhD became the head of Edison International by following problems beyond the laboratory. Now Pedro Pizarro has to reconcile California’s electric ambitions with the cost, safety and trust of the grid beneath them.
Mark Widmar and the arithmetic of staying in the game
An accountant became the CEO of First Solar, then cancelled a product before it reached the market. Mark Widmar’s career turns on a stubborn question: what is worth building for the long run?
Joe Dominguez and the twenty-year promise
The former engineer and federal prosecutor now leads Constellation. His deals with technology companies reveal what happens when the speed of AI meets the long working life of a power plant.