Robert J. Kraft Named President and CEO of Energy Storage & Power (ES&P)
BRIDGEWATER, N.J., Feb. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Energy Storage & Power, LLC (ES&P) announced today that Robert "Bob" Kraft will become its president and chief executive officer, effective March 8, 2010. He replaces Stephen C. Byrd who left the company in January.
ES&P is a joint venture between PSEG and Dr. Michael Nakhamkin. Dr. Nakhamkin is ES&P's chief technology officer and the world's leading compressed air energy storage (CAES) technology expert. He holds patents for the second generation of CAES (CAES2) and power augmentation (PA) technology.
Kraft comes to ES&P from Florida-based Power Systems Manufacturing LLC (PSM). Kraft helped start PSM in 1999, selling the company to Calpine in December 2000. He stayed on as vice president of engineering where he developed low-emission combustion systems and innovating turbine components. He assisted Calpine in selling PSM to Alstom in 2007 and remained on as president.
Kraft will oversee ES&P's efforts to help bring the tremendous potential of the CAES2 and PA technologies to the market. Two CAES2 projects that will utilize ES&P patented technology have been awarded Department of Energy stimulus grants of $54 million: PG&E for a more than 300-megawatt plant in California and NYSEG for a more than 150-megawatt plant in New York State.
"Bob Kraft has the entrepreneurial skills and long-term relationships in the industry that fit well with the current needs of the company," said Randy Mehrberg, chairman of ES&P and executive vice-president of PSEG. "Bob has grown a generation technology business from startup to significant player in its field – and we are looking forward to his repeating that success at ES&P."
"Bob has deep engineering experience in the energy industry that will allow him to take our first projects off the drawing board and into operations," added Dr. Nakhamkin. "Bob is no stranger to ES&P. He successfully supervised application of the ES&P's power augmentation technology applied to GE7FA combustion turbine at Broadriver Project of Calpine Corporation."
ES&P exclusively markets, licenses and supports the development and supervises projects execution based on the second generation of CAES and PA technologies.
ES&P's patented second generation of the CAES technology has attractive performance, operational and economic characteristics as well as unique flexibility to optimize these characteristics to meet various renewable energy and "smart grid" requirements. The technology is well-suited for plants ranging from 15 megawatts (using above ground air storage system) to over 400 megawatts (using below ground geologic formations storage).
CAES technology plants are designed to store inexpensive off-peak energy and return energy to the grid during higher priced on-peak time periods. CAES can be used for load management of intermittent renewable energy resources, to increase the load factor of base load plants, or as a stand-alone intermediate generation source for capturing energy arbitrage, capacity payments and ancillary services.
ES&P patented power augmentation technology provides the highest power augmentation with a significant heat rate reduction of combustion turbine/combined cycle power plants -- at a fraction of the cost of constructing a new power plant.
SOURCE Energy Storage & Power, LLC (ES&P)
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