AMS Appoints Software Leader as CEO

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- AMS Board of Directors announced the appointment of Seyed Madaeni, Ph.D. as the company's chief executive officer today, replacing founder Susan Kennedy who was named chairman of the board of directors.  Kennedy founded the company in 2014 and has served as chief executive and director of the company for 5 years. Madaeni joined AMS in January of 2018 and has served as chief product officer, leading the design and development of the company's artificial intelligence software platform for transacting batteries, wind, solar and other complex energy assets in energy markets.

"I am incredibly proud to announce the appointment of Seyed Madaeni as chief executive of AMS," Kennedy said.  "AMS was born on the front lines of a revolution in the energy industry, transforming from one-way grids designed for coal and gas, to high-speed transactional grids designed for solar, wind, batteries, and distributed energy. This new era in the energy industry will witness the exponential growth in the use of machine learning software and artificial intelligence in energy markets around the world, and there is no better person to lead AMS as the company enters this next phase."

"I am excited for the opportunity to take AMS to a new level," Madaeni said.  "Energy markets around the world are experiencing massive challenges integrating renewables, energy storage, and distributed generation into grid and market operations.  AMS is leading the transformation to smarter, faster, more resilient power markets and I'm honored to take the reins as we enter this new chapter. We have a strong team and a compelling vision that makes me confident that AMS will reorient the power sector to address 21^st century needs regarding cost, performance, and emissions."

Before joining AMS, Madaeni guided electricity market participation at Tesla, where he was part of the team that successfully built and operationalized the first version of Tesla's trading platform for integrating the world's largest li-ion battery in Australia's wholesale electricity market.  He previously held Principal positions at SolarCity and Pacific Gas & Electric where he collaborated with utilities, regulators and other market operators to design groundbreaking software platforms to effectively integrate and leverage distributed energy resources to benefit the grid, customers and emissions.  At Tesla and Solar City, Madaeni designed some of the earliest and most innovative algorithms for battery storage projects that accounted for multi-use applications such as aggregation of Tesla Powerwalls for grid resiliency sponsored by Vermont's Green Mountain Power.  At PG&E, Madaeni designed software platforms to optimize and dispatch some of the first grid-connected lithium-ion batteries in the world, as well as pumped hydro storage systems and renewables. Madaeni has published numerous academic papers in journals such as IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, Proceedings of IEEE, Energy Systems, as well as technical reports for The National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Madaeni holds a B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from University of Tehran and Ph.D. in Systems Engineering (Operations Research) from The Ohio State University.

In July, the first wind farm equipped with AMS' artificial intelligence software self-executed a "precision trading" strategy, successfully navigating extremely volatile wholesale energy prices in Australia's National Electricity Market. The use of the AMS software platform on renewable assets in South Australia is estimated to have increased revenues to project owners by as much as 6%, thereby augmenting this carbon free approach.

Kennedy founded AMS in 2014 bringing together energy market experts to develop a software platform to help California cost effectively integrate the huge amounts of solar, wind, and distributed generation installed as a result of California's aggressive clean energy policies over the last decade.  AMS' first projects using battery storage included a groundbreaking fleet of Hybrid-Electric Buildings that delivers more than 6,000 MWh of flexible capacity for one of California's largest utilities as part of a 70 MW/360 MWh "virtual power plant".  In 2018, AMS launched the wholesale trading platform in Australia where high penetrations of solar and wind have stressed the electric grid, causing wild swings in wholesale energy prices. 

Over the last year, AMS has built a contracted pipeline of more than 2,200 MW of solar, wind and battery storage assets in the US and Australia and is in active discussions with major developers and utilities around the world.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Alyssa Denison
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About AMS:  AMS is leading the clean energy revolution with the most advanced transactive energy platform in the world.  AMS' SigmaOne™ A.I. optimization software uses deep learning algorithms to enable strategic optimized trading of complex energy assets in competitive power markets. AMS' uniquely powerful team includes energy market experts, data scientists and technology developers that have designed, built, operated and financed some of the most complex energy assets in the world.

SOURCE AMS

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