London, 10/06/2024: Energy industry veteran and serial entrepreneur Marc Laitin joins Electron as Head of North American Markets to scale flexible energy and grid resilience markets in the US.
Marc Laitin will lead Electron’s expansion in North America, accelerating Electron’s vision to unleash renewable abundance by connecting millions of distributed energy resources (DERs) to thousands of coordinated markets.
Today half of the UK’s network operators, including Electricity North West, Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks, and National Grid Electricity Distribution, use Electron’s neutral market platform to scale DER participation in dynamic, flexible energy and grid resilience markets. Combining Marc and Electron’s expertise will help grow flexibility in the US.
Energy flexibility is a key tool to cost-effectively maintain and scale electric grids in light of continually growing electricity demand and less predictable renewable energy generation on our path to Net Zero.
Energy flexibility in the US has traditionally been achieved through long-term programs and bi-lateral contracts between utilities, and DERs and their operators. However, the administrative burden of operating programs in this manner is inhibiting the volume needed to support that massive load growth; grid congestion; and variable, weather driven generation.
Electron’s neutral market platform, ElectronConnect, addresses this challenge through a single, simple interface, coordinating and cultivating dynamic, flexible energy markets.
Marc joins a team highly knowledgeable in flexibility to add his wealth of expertise working with utility companies and cleantech startups in the US market.
Marc Laitin, Head of US at Electron, says:
“The UK, in large part due to its unique energy generation mix and regulatory structure, is leading the way in deploying dynamic, scalable flexible energy markets. Electron’s platform, informed by in-market deployments and insights, can help support more renewable, flexible grids in North America.
“This is critical to building grid resiliency, meeting our rapidly growing demand for electricity, and addressing our global challenge of a Net Zero future.”
Jo-Jo Hubbard, CEO and Co-Founder of Electron, says:
“Clean flexibility (think storage and demand response) is both the most important and the most realistic tool in the box to manage increasingly variable and congested electricity grids.
“The US is a pivotal market for advancing clean flexibility, with certain states already beginning to leverage demand response at some scale. It’s also a complex and fractured market. We see significant potential to elevate this flexibility further, enhancing volume, value, and grid resiliency in lock step.
“We are thrilled that Marc will join us and bring to bear his extensive experience working with utilities to address the challenges of an increasingly complex grid.”
Marc was previously the Founder and CEO at ideas42 Ventures, and VP of Product Management at Opower, now Opower Oracle Utilities.
At Opower, Marc was responsible for launching multiple new product lines, as well as constructing hundreds of large-scale, behavioral-science-informed market tests to enhance the effectiveness of Opower programs and led international product development, helping deploy Opower in the UK, Sweden, Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.
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About Electron
Electron’s vision is to unleash renewable abundance by connecting millions of distributed energy resources to thousands of coordinated flexibility programs and markets using ElectronConnect. This highly configurable Software as a Service platform allows electricity system operators, network utilities, and municipal suppliers, to launch, operate, and coordinate local flexibility markets at scale.
Electron also provides trade execution services and full life-cycle support to flexibility service providers, enabling our customers to play a leading role in the Net Zero Energy transition – delivering a reliable and safe network, at the lowest cost, and with industry leading customer experience.
For media requests, please contact Emma Lovell at emma.lovell@electron.net.
