Solarplaza Summit | Energy Storage The Netherlands

Pedro Iván Leal Jáuregui is a seasoned Product Specialist and Commercial Delivery Manager at Dexter Energy, where he leads the strategic implementation and continuous enhancement of the Flex Optimization solutions. With a robust background in the energy sector, Pedro previously held roles as a business analyst and consultant, where he provided high-level insights and guidance on critical energy projects. His expertise is underpinned by a Master of Sciences in Sustainable Energy from Delft University of Technology, where he authored a thesis on the "Evaluation of energy markets for demand response and congestion management in decentralized systems."

Nienke Rijpstra works as an Investment Director at StartGreen Capital, where she manages the team of Energiefonds Overijssel. This fund has €330 million in assets under management and provides both entrepreneurs and project owners financing for the energy transition and the circular economy. Her personal focus is on solar, battery storage systems, energy infrastructure, and geothermal energy. Nienke is responsible for the acquisition, deal execution, and portfolio management.

Rianne 't Hoen is Project Manager at Green Energy Storage, based in the Netherlands. She is responsible for the development and realization of Battery Energy Storage System sites, both co-located as stand-alone systems. Rianne has a technical background, she holds a PhD in Physics. She has been working in the renewable energy sector and battery energy storage systems for 10 years. Her experience ranges from battery safety testing, market studies, technology assessments and technical due diligences.

Jesse heads Aurora’s Research and Advisory team for the Dutch and Belgian markets. His expertise is the economics of renewables, flexible technologies, and energy policy, with a proven track record as a market advisor on several strategic studies and transactions for developers, investors, and policy makers. Prior to joining Aurora, Jesse worked for Eneco in Rotterdam.

Wiebrand Kout founded Elestor in 2014 to fill the need for large scale, ultra low cost electricity storage. Wiebrand is responsible for the development of the company’s core technology, intellectual property, cost modelling and product planning. He pioneered three H2 electrochemical systems: the PEM fuel cell (NedStack), the electrochemical hydrogen compressor (HyEt) and at Elestor the redox flow battery.

Philip Gladek is a self-taught engineer with a background in business strategy. Originally from New York City, Philip founded Spectral in Amsterdam in 2015 to focus on accelerating the sustainable energy transition through the development of smart energy technologies. As CEO of Spectral, Philip is responsible for leading the organization and directing the development of Spectral’s suite of cutting-edge technology platforms. With a specialization in energy and asset management systems, Spectral’s smart energy solutions focus on on a number of key impact areas, including: smart buildings, smart grids, distributed energy resources, and energy / flexibility markets.

Janneke Tjon Pian Gi has 15 years of experience in energy markets through roles in strategy consultancy, Venture Capital and Shell. As CCO at long duration energy storage (LDES) start-up AQUABATTERY, she leads the company’s commercial strategy and partnerships and works closely with its pilot customers to validate LDES markets and use cases.

Tugay Akbulut is a policy officer at the Ministry of Climate Policy and Green Growth. He focuses on the topics grid congestion, energy storage and energy innovation for our current and future energy systems. Tugay is particularly interested in the coordinated integration of chains of different energy carriers and end-use sectors into one sustainable, reliable, affordable, and safe energy system. Prior to joining the Ministry, Tugay worked for the Authority Consumers and Markets in the Energy Department with a focus on district heating and regional grid management.

Dr. Kai-Philipp Kairies is co-founder and CEO of ACCURE Battery Intelligence, a leading provider of solutions to manage battery safety, performance, and health for electric vehicles, energy storage, and other industries. During more than 15 years working in the battery industry, Dr. Kairies co-authored some of the most-quoted analyses on the costs, benefits, and market potential of battery systems and consulted several governments on their battery adoption strategies. Before launching ACCURE in 2020, Dr. Kairies led Europe’s largest research group devoted to stationary battery systems and provided technical advice and consulting services to a variety of mobility and energy companies around the world. He has a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology from RWTH Aachen University.

Coming soon

Martien Visser works as part time professor at Hanze University where lectures on energy transition, with specialisation energy systems and energy infrastructure. Martien publishes daily graphs about the energy market on "X" under @BM_Visser. He has a monthly blog on Energiepodium about Energy Policy (in Dutch). Martien has another part time job at Gasunie, the public Dutch gas infrastructure company, where he acts as manager strategy. Martien is fellow of the Centre of International Energy Policy (CIEP) in The Hague.

Bio coming soon

Gino is an experienced banker that works for more than 8 years for ING. He currently works for ING Wholesale Banking in the Sustainable Structured Finance (SSF) team and has financed all types of solar projects in The Netherlands (ground mounted, rooftop portfolio’s, floating, tracking, carports and landfill). The SSF team is based in Amsterdam and focuses on providing structured finance solutions for client investments in sustainable projects in the EMEA region. These projects typically involve new technologies or business models which are not yet covered by the sector teams. The SSF team has a focus on projects in the area of plastics, sustainable heating, battery storage, on shore wind and solar but is open to discuss any other sustainable project as well.

Rens Savenije is the business lead system integration at Ventolines. As business lead system integration Rens is responsible for the business development and execution of new projects where wind, solar and storage are combined in one hybrid asset. He will present his work on Windplan Groen, a 500MW wind energy project in the Netherlands, where wind, solar and storage owners are sharing one high voltage grid connection using a private grid. Ventolines guides clients in the development, construction and management of now more than 2 GW installed capacity of renewable energy. They have experience with projects on land and in the water working on solutions for solar, wind, storage and hybrid projects.

Nold Jaeger leads the Holland Solar policy and public affairs team. Holland Solar represents the Dutch solar-PV market in The Hague and Brussels. He has been involved in the policy-making field for solar PV for the past five years. With a background in EU energy and climate policy, for the last five years, he has focussed on improving the development conditions for large-scale solar PV on land, rooftops, and water and residential PV.

Christoph Gardlo is the Co-Founder and COO of ESFORIN (Energy Services for Industry). The company’s core business is algorithm trading in intraday markets with clients’ flexibilities – helping companies to optimize energy costs and reduce significant amounts of CO2. Before becoming an independent energy entrepreneur, Christoph gained profound experience in the energy markets in various companies. In the 2000s he joined E.ON with focus on Marketing, later becoming Account Manager Power Station Sales. In 2010 he was Head of Gas Sales Germany at Cargill, then Head of Key Accounts Portfolioservices & International Sales at natGAS AG, before he became COO and Co-Founder of ESFORIN.

Cyriel de Jong has been working as an advisor for the energy industry since 2001. Until 2006, he combined this with a position at Erasmus University Rotterdam. For the major companies in Europe, Cyriel has led a great number of projects related to energy market valuation, risk management, trading strategies and investment analysis. He is particularly active in price modeling, financial methodologies to value energy assets and contracts, and in stochastic optimization. Cyriel completed his MSc. in Econometrics at Maastricht University, and finished his Ph.D. on financial derivatives at Erasmus University Rotterdam in 2003.

Wilko is a lawyer and has ample experience in regulated markets and competition law. His main focus is the energy sector. He works in cases relating to the energy transition, grid congestion, and tariff regulation. Prior to joining the ACM, he worked as an attorney in Stek’s regulatory team. Wilko holds LLM’s in both European law and law & economics.

Jan-Phillip is part of Encavis AG’s investment team and based in Hamburg, Germany. Since joining the German IPP in 2020 he has lead PV transactions in Germany, The Netherlands and Spain where he was responsible for contract negotiations (SPA, EPC, Project Financing, etc.), due diligence process and financial valuation. Jan-Phillip is particularly interested in creating client-driven, subsidy-free business cases for renewables.

Dennis van der Meij is the driving force behind #kennisdelen (sharing knowledge) on LinkedIn and an independent solar and battery realist! Specializing in energy consulting, (battery) yield calculations, content creation and frequently seen as a guest speaker at events. His focus is on the energy transition from generation to consumption, from solar panels to inverters and from (home) batteries through revenue models to distribution boxes. This hipster with a cap doesn't tell you what you want to hear, but what you need to know!

My name is Jip Rietveld, CIO of GIGA Storage. After finishing my degree in Computer Science and Engineering at the TU Delft I have found a love for energy markets, large-scale energy storage and everything battery-related at GIGA Storage. Me and my team are responsible for the in-house developed IT platform of GIGA Storage. The IT platform is responsible for trading our batteries, renting out energy storage to 3rd party customers and the safe steering of our large-scale energy storage systems. I have been with GIGA Storage since 2020 and look forward to seeing the company, and our batteries, grow in size continuously!

Eiso Vaandrager is the CEO and co-founder of Dispatch. Dispatch is a developer and operator of large-scale batteries in Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. Eiso has 25 year’s experience in the renewables sector. Previously Eiso worked as a PE/VC investor and equity project financier, financing a wide range of renewable assets, including the battery at the Amsterdam Arena back in 2018. Eiso will look at the massive opportunity for batteries and some of the pitfalls.

I’m Mark Bouman-Schildkamp, Manager Cyber Strategy & Transformations at Deloitte. Within the Dutch firm, I am the capability lead for our Cybersecurity Maturity Assessments and part of Deloitte’s Energy, Resources and Industrials team. I have been in the Cybersecurity business for almost 10 years with broad experience in assessments, with over 100+ assessments at a variety of organizations. As a part of Deloitte’s ER&I team, I focus on cybersecurity services tailored for the energy and renewables sector.

Bob Ran is Innovation Manager Flexibility at the Strategy and Partnerships department of TenneT TSO B.V. He leads an innovation program focused on flexibility and drives the development of large-scale Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) policies. Previously, Bob was Program Manager for Electricity System Transition at TNO, where he led research in the field of electrification and flexibility.

Peter Desmet is a pioneer of the Solar and Storage markets since 2008. He founded Solarclarity, Denim Solar and Bliq, now part of The Sharing Group. Peter has been an advocate of the need of managed integration of photovoltaic energy into the grid since 2015. After pushing the rapid roll-out of solar energy in Europe he founded Bliq EMS in 2019, as it is always easier to solve a problem once you’ve first created it… Peter will share his experiences and insights accumulated over his 16 year “solarcoaster ride” and takes a peek at what might lay behind the next looping of the new “storagecoaster”.

Onno de Vries is Coordinator of the REMIT Team at the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets. Together with his team, his focus is on the well-functioning of wholesale energy market trading. This consists of enforcing compliance in case of market manipulation, providing guidance to the market including the obligation to register, and to keep track with important developments such as algo-trading. Onno is educated as an economist and earlier he worked in the Competition Department at the ACM.

Lauren is the VP of Policy and Communications for Encore Renewable Energy. She has two decades of experience in clean energy and climate change advocacy, and a successful track record for implementing winning social media and online strategies. In 2023, Lauren was elected to serve a two year term on Solar Energy Industry Association’s Board of Directors as Vice Chair of Energy Storage. She was awarded a Platinum Cleanie Award in 2019 as a Rising Star for the clean energy industry, as well as a spot on the #Solar100, a ranking of the most influential leaders in the solar industry. She has spearheaded the strategic marketing and communications efforts for numerous companies and organizations across the renewable energy sector. Lauren has spent the last decade as a communications consultant for nonprofits and renewable energy businesses as a Managing Partner for RenewComm and independently as WindyGlick Communications. She’s worked with leaders across the wind, solar, energy storage and clean energy finance sectors including Women of Renewable Industries and Sustainable Energy, CleanCapital, Hannon Armstrong, Rope Partner, Solar Energy Trade Shows (now RE+), Grid Alternatives and Edison Energy. Previously, she was at the American Wind Energy Association (now the American Clean Power Association), where she was responsible for the re-design, relaunch and management of their social media program and the Power of Wind online advocacy portal. Her work was recognized among the top 10 social-media-savvy trade associations. She has also successfully organized marketing and advocacy campaigns for the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Environmental Working Group, and the Fund for Public Interest Research. Lauren served as an adjunct professor at The George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs, teaching undergraduate, graduate and executive education courses and seminars on social media theory and practice for a decade. She holds a Bachelor’s in Environmental Policy and English from Tulane University. Outside of her work to accelerate the clean energy transition, Lauren enjoys cooking, bluegrass, horseback riding and hikes with her dog Basil. She is a competitive amateur equestrian and competes with her horse George in the adult jumpers in the Vermont.

Coming soon

Jean-Paul Harreman has been active in European power markets since 2001 and has extensive experience in short-term trading and asset optimization. Montel Analytics provides long-term BESS valuation, battery indices and short-term and real-time decision support to developers, investors, traders, grid and asset operators and has played a role in nearly every utility scale battery project reaching financial close in the Benelux since 2020. As product owner of the Montel EnAppSys platform, Jean-Paul leads product and service development of the short-term and flexibility product suite for Montel, a major pan-European energy news and data provider.

Jan Willem has over 20 years of experience in the energy market and worked for some of the larger utilities. Early 2020, Jan Willem sold his previous companies Greenspread and Greencrowd to private equity concern NPM Capital. Since his departure in October 2020, Jan Willem works as an independent consultant at Stratergy. Stratergy advises funds, banks, utilities, and large consumers and producers of energy and specializes in maximizing asset value and minimizing financial risk.

Vincent Bonnin holds a PhD in wind-energy harvesting optimization and has more than 10 years’ experience in applied research in both academic institutions and technology developers. He was notably involved in technology de-risking activities at Ampyx Power, developing airborne wind energy and more recently was a TUDelft researcher on hybrid-electric aircraft design. He is part of the technical team at DMEC since 2024, with a strong focus on energy-storage aspects. He is notably managing the OASIS accelerator, an Interreg NSR project kicked-off in September 2024 and will soon start research activities within the OESTER project (MOOI-project, lead by TNO).

Derek is a policy officer at Holland Solar. Holland Solar represents the Dutch solar-PV market in The Hague and Brussels. He is responsible for several topics, including the electric grid and the finance and market conditions for large scale projects.

Edwin founded Solarplaza company in 2004. He is a senior PV expert and started in the photovoltaic solar energy business in 1994. He has experience as a solar energy consultant and project developer in more than 200 PV projects. Edwin holds a Master’s degree in Chemical engineering and previously worked in the Chemical industry before starting his first consultancy company in PV in 1994.

Dee Yon Chng (pronounced Dion) is a project manager for Solarplaza spearheading the following events in chronological order: Agri-PV 2023, Floating-PV 2023, Energy Storage Spain 2023, Romania 2024, France 2024. Prior to Solarplaza she helped co-found a "floating" coaching company, and worked as sustainability consultant. She is a strong believer in knowledge sharing around sustainability topics, with 10 years of chairman experience in facilitating a collaborative and fruitful discussion.