New hires in the U.S. and Canada

Mr. Wraith has 15 years of experience in wind energy with a primary focus on blade inspection, repair, and quality assurance. He has led multiple inspection and quality assurance campaigns on various blade types and manufacturers. His experience includes inspection finding assessment and damage categorization along with the design and work instruction development for blade composite repairs. He has performed multiple blade failure investigations and field assessments of blade damage. He has conducted multiple blade manufacturing and quality surveys in North and South America, Europe, and Asia.

Kaitlin is the project scheduler for the Civil Engineering team. Her primary responsibility is to coordinate work between our team and other sections. This includes finding appropriate SMEs to support tasks, leading scheduling calls, document inventories, and understanding scope and budget of projects before they are assigned. She has previous experience in the renewable energy field as wind turbine technician & hopes to continue growing her engineering knowledge regarding renewables, by taking part in DNV trainings as well as collaborating with staff across different disciplines.

Mr. Sroufe boomeranged back to DNV in late 2022 after a 3 year detour in protection and control design with Ulteig. His background is in electrical engineering with an emphasis on power and specifically renewable energy. During his first tour with DNV he worked on the electrical team conducting independent engineering (IE) reviews for electrical design packages, interconnection agreements reviews, and construction monitoring for wind and solar new generation projects. Back on the electrical team he is continuing his previous work as an IE but has expanded his scope to include owners engineering reviews as well. Mr. Sroufe looks forward to being a part of DNV’s growth into the offshore wind industry as is excited by the accelerating growth of DNV’s operations within the renewable energy industry.

Ashrith is a chemical engineering graduate from the University of Toronto with specializations in electro-chemical energy storage devices and alternative vehicle propulsion technologies such as fuel cell, hybrids as well as novel battery technologies. Ashrith has been following the hydrogen industry since 2013 and has surveyed and interviewed more than 20 electrolyzer vendors globally, including more experimental technologies such as membrane-free, solid oxide and anion-exchange membrane designs. In his previous role as owner’s engineer, Ashrith has worked on various feasibility studies and modeling exercises for mining companies who wish to implement hydrogen for fleet electrification and as an owner’s engineer on the FEL2 study for a major steel-plant’s 800 MW hydrogen system, featuring a combination of PEM, Alkaline and Solid Oxide electrolyzers located in Sweden. Ashrith is currently part of the technology team in the energy storage group and reviews hydrogen systems and battery energy storage systems, both the lithium and non-lithium ion-based systems.

Uday Guntupalli is currently a Product Manager for DNV's proprietary merchant modeling platform (Hybrid Energy Resource Optimizer) and battery degradation analytical platform (Battery AI). In this role, his focus is on supporting developers/investors/owners in their efforts to help with feasibility analysis, benchmarking performance of storage/hybrid assets. He has 8 years of experience in the renewables industry working for solar panel manufacturers, technical advisors, and asset developers/owners. Interests: He is passionate about renewables and process automation, Python based development and analytics.

As an energy storage consultant on the ESE team, Naphtal mainly supports technology due diligence, energy safety and energy access projects. He also reviews financial models and BESS degradation and dispatch data for independent engineering projects. As an energy storage enthusiast, Naphtal's experience spans both the academia and the industry world. As a researcher in the Aziz lab at Harvard University, Naphtal was involved in investigating and developing energy storage molecules to support a commercially viable flow battery chemistry. His research work led to individual accolades such as a scientific publication on the prestigious ECS journal and the Dean's award honorable mention for his thesis project. In the industry world at DNV, Naphtal has continued to pursue his interest in energy storage by being involved in various projects in three subsections of the Energy Storage Engineering team. This work includes technology due diligence and safety analysis of electrochemical energy storage systems including flow batteries, lithium-ion batteries and electrolyzers. Naphtal has also contributed to energy access projects in Africa. In addition, Naphtal provides support for the financial model and BESS degradation and dispatch review for IE projects.

Dr. Mark Kellenberger is a hydrogen combustion and explosion safety expert currently serving as a Senior Engineer on the Safety Team of the Energy Storage Engineering section at DNV. He carries out technical safety reviews related to energy storage systems, by performing technical due diligence, safety testing, and computational fluid dynamic (CFD) modelling. He supports a range of research, modeling, and review projects including technology, hardware, code compliance, and safety reviews for unique energy storage projects that include technologies such as lithium-ion batteries and hydrogen electrolyzers. Dr. Kellenberger has 10 years of experience as a lead engineering researcher and deep technical experience from the designing, building, and carrying out of tests to examine the complex nature of hydrogen and other gas-phase explosions. Dr. Kellenberger earned his PhD from Queen’s University and holds a BSc and a MASc in Mechanical Engineering from the same institution.

Isabella McDonald is an Associate Project Manager working with DNV's Energy Storage Independent Engineering team. Isabella has extensive experience researching material compatibility for next generation energy systems. She is experienced in metallography, heat treating, electrochemistry, and alloy characterization (SEM-EDS, TEM-EDS, LOM). Most recently Isabella worked as a Junior Scientist at Terrestrial Energy Incorporated on the research and development team. Isabella was responsible for developing experimental procedures, assessing and mitigating project risks, and overseeing corrosion research development.

Marty is a licensed professional engineer performing thermal management and safety analysis on energy storage systems and components. Before joining Energy Storage Engineering he spent 7 years with DNV’s Pilots contract developing and testing energy efficiency products for Consumers Energy. He has 18 years prior experience designing mechanical systems for the commercial/industrial building industry.

Ms. O’Mara is an Offshore Permitting Manager in the Environmental and Permitting Services department at DNV. She has over 4 years of diverse experience in the renewable energy industry, particularly offshore wind, onshore wind, and solar. She holds a master’s degree in Environmental Policy and Management and is a certified Envision Sustainability Professional. Ms. O’Mara has a wide range of expertise in environmental due diligence, stakeholder engagement during all phases of a project, maritime risk mitigation strategy, and post-construction permit compliance for America’s first offshore wind farm. She is a strong advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in the workplace.

Ms. Murphy has recently joined DNV and brings over 14 years of environmental consulting experience related to regulatory advisement and permitting experience in oil and gas, utilities, renewables, and agricultural projects. She has experience managing projects of varying sizes, regulatory applications, multi-year field programs, and multi-disciplinary projects. Her diverse professional background including desktop project constraint reviews, general site reconnaissance, field data collection, project site visits with Indigenous stakeholders, environmental and siting support for open houses. She has a strong understanding of the provincial and federal regulatory requirements to obtain environmental approvals. She is the Permitting Project Manager and Team Lead at DNV for Renewables in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Midwest US.

Braden works for DNV as a Senior Technical Manager with the Measurements team. Braden has ten years of experience in the wind and solar energy field, including six years as a project manager and professional engineer based out of Alberta, Canada. Braden specializes in wind and solar field installations/project management and wind turbine power performance tests. Braden has experience in wind and solar resource data QC as well as analysis/resource assessments. Braden has worked at greenfield and active wind projects from 10 MW to 300 MW across western Canada and a number of States. Braden has hands-on experience with remote sensing devices, remote power supplies, tilt up tubular towers, and SCADA conected lattice towers. Braden has participated in power measurement analysis and equipment installs in a number of turbines including Vestas, Enercon, and GE. Braden specializes in managing safety, budget, materials and personnel on projects from large international clients to local site managers.

Téa Spellacy joined DNV in 2022 and has been in renewables since 2019. On the Mergers and Acquisitions team, Ms. Spellacy supports technical due diligence of wind, solar and storage transactions for pre-construction and operational projects. Prior to joining DNV, she was a Financial Analyst at Vineyard Wind, where she supported the development of all offshore projects, lease areas, and bids. She holds a B.S degree in Business Administration from Babson College.

Miki joined DNV as a Project Manager on May 31.  She received her B.S. from West Point in 2013 and continued her service in the Army through 2019, earning her M.S. from the University of Denver immediately before transitioning out of service. Upon transitioning from the military she worked at GE Renewable Energy on the Digital Services team as the Global Portfolio Manager for product strategy and marketing. This role provided her with the opportunity to work with teams across the world developing onshore wind product lines and services to match policy demands, customer needs, and competitor products. Miki is based in upstate NY and she is joining the team with her husband, Jack, and son, Darby. The family spends their personal time on their farm, Yankee Acres in the Catskills, NY where they produce chemical-free maple syrup, eggs, and poultry (with honey on the horizon).

Fredrik Ambrosson is a Project Manager in DNV's Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) group, where he performs due diligence on solar, wind and storage projects in support of large-scale M&A transactions. He is a certified Professional Engineer with 7+ years of experience and a successful track record in project management and regulatory affairs, primarily acting as lender's advisor to support transmission and renewable energy project financing and participating in utility regulatory filings. Fredrik is currently based out of Toronto, Canada, but is originally from Sweden, where he obtained his Bachelor's and Master’s degree from Scandinavia’s top-ranked technical university, KTH, in Stockholm. Lastly, having grown up on a farm in the Swedish north, he loves the outdoors and has a great appreciation for wildlife and the environment.

Ms. McIlraith is an Associate Project Manager in the Mergers and Acquisitions team within the Renewables and Power Grids Group, North America. In this position she performs project management activities to assist with due diligence reviews and ensures excellent customer commination. She completed a MSc in Sustainable Energy Science from Reykjavik University in Iceland, and loves to travel to new places. Additionally, she loves to ski during the winter and is a certified ski instructor.

Anna joined DNV as an Offshore Wind Analyst for the North America Offshore Wind team in April. She received her B.S. in Environmental Science & Sustainability and M.Eng in Environmental Engineering from Cornell University. Prior to joining DNV, Anna was an Energy Market Industry Analyst at ICF, where she also acted as a contractor for the U.S. Department of Energy. Anna is based in Washington D.C., where she resides with her partner, Sam, and black cat, Natalie. She spends her free time going to museums and public parks.

Sean is a consultant within DNV's Storage and Grid Intelligence team. At DNV, Sean performs due diligence and merchant market modeling for energy storage projects. Sean has an extensive background in energy economics and energy market optimization.  Prior to joining DNV, Sean worked as a senior economist at the CAISO on the market design and analytics team. He holds an M.S. in Agricultural & Resource Economics from UC Davis.

Dr. Morgan Putnam is an experienced renewable energy leader focused on grid transformation and new product development. He has raised USD 15 million of funding, launched Product Management and Business Development departments, and managed groups of stakeholders with conflicting interests. At DNV Morgan is focused on enabling the development of regional and interregional transmission with a specific focus on HVDC transmission and OSW transmission. Immediately prior to DNV, Morgan founded NGI Consulting, which developed the NextGen Highways Initiative. Morgan has also held roles as the VP of Solar Products at REsurety, where he developed and launched a series of solar product offerings, and as the co-lead of new product development and partnerships at Clean Power Research. At Clean Power Research, Morgan worked closely with utilities to integrate distributed solar onto the grid and where he led the MN Solar Pathways project that highlighted the importance of strategic curtailment to reduce seasonal energy storage needs as renewable penetrations increase.

Mahendhar Mareddy is a Professional Engineer (P.E.) with over 14 years of experience at utility and consulting firms in reliability-based transient stability and steady state power flow analysis for generation and transmission planning. He has performed numerous generation interconnection studies focusing on renewable (Wind, Solar, Storage) in MISO and ERCOT regions. He has also performed numerous load interconnection studies in SPP region. His experience includes performing and managing the NERC Compliance assessments (such as TPL-001-4, CIP-014, FAC-014, MOD25/26/27), FERC Regulatory tasks such as Order 1000 (for SPP DPP process). He is a proficient user of PSS/E (Siemens PTI), CAPE and MUST software. Previously, he has worked with Xcel Energy Utility (SPS, Amarillo) as Senior Transmission Planning Engineer and with OATI as Transmission Planning Engineer.

Dr. Reza Goldoost is graduated from Queensland University of Technology in 2015 and since then has been working for several companies as power system engineer. Dr. Reza Goldoost has more than 10 years of experience in academia and also industry. He has been working in the US industry since 2016 in several areas including EMT, RMS and Steady-State domain. He has worked on technical fields such as, dynamic/transient stability, loadflow and short circuit studies, subsynchronous resonance (SSR) studies, Transient Recovery Voltage (TRV) studies and harmonic analysis. Dr. Goldoost has also been involved in dynamic modeling of components both for renewable power plants and conventional ones in different software. Dr. Reza Goldoost is proficient in working with several professional power system tools including PSCAD, Matlab, PowerFactory and familiar with PSS/E and ETAP.

Michael Spanos is a dynamic engineering professional with eight years of experience in the utility industry, working with a major transmission utility in the ERCOT system. In past roles Michael has gained four years' experience performing transmission planning stability studies. Michael specializes in transient stability analysis and has performed studies to support transmission operations, generation and load interconnections, and NERC compliance. Michael has facilitated compliance for NERC reliability standards such as TPL-001, PRC-010, PRC-012, PRC-026 and CIP-014. Michael is proficient in Python and uses scripts to automate his work and create tools to perform complex tasks and analysis. Before working in transmission planning, Michael worked for four years preparing relay settings and performing relay coordination studies. While working in this role, Michael developed specialized relay settings for a large-scale (spanning 200 miles of transmission lines and 6 switching stations) transfer tripping scheme in West Texas in order to serve an area of the ERCOT system that had seen a staggering 200% increase in load over four years. Michael's unique combination of system protection and transmission planning experience gives him unique insight into the behavior of the transmission system.

Ms. Pearce is the Business Support Specialist and Administrator for the Power System Analysis group in Dallas, TX. In this position she manages IT equipment, New Hires, SharePoints, procurement, team activities and events, ensuring a productive and problem free work environment for her team. Originally from the UK, she moved to the states in 2002, enlisting into the Air Force in 2015, where she is still currently serving in the Reserves, as the hospitals Inspection Program Manager. She obtained her Bachelors in Food Science & Nutrition, with an emphasis in Dietetics, from Texas Woman's University in Denton, TX. Additionally, she has coached recreational and competitive gymnastics for a collective 7 years.

Bill Magness has spent over thirty years working at the shifting intersections of business, technology, security, regulatory compliance, and public policy. From 2016 to 2021, Bill served as President and Chief Executive Officer of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, Inc. (ERCOT), the electric grid operator and markets manager for 90% of Texas. Prior to becoming CEO, Bill was Senior Vice-President & General Counsel at ERCOT.

Hannah is a Product Manager in the Renewable & Power Grids group. She brings over 8 years of experience working on a range of energy projects at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Most recently, she managed product development and stakeholder engagement for a software platform that streamlines the management of energy efficiency projects and is excited to leverage that experience as a member of DNV’s Product & Data team.

Silpa Parnandi has 15+ years of experience as a Power Systems Engineer working in electric utilities and consulting. She is knowledgeable in economic analysis of transmission projects, production cost modeling & analysis, LMP forecasting & load forecasting. She has extensive experience in economic transmission planning and development projects through SCED analysis including FERC Order 1000 in both PJM and MISO wholesale markets. She worked on numerous studies in support of transmission and generation expansion studies and has worked with various modeling software for production cost analysis. In her current role, she coordinates and performs production cost analysis to analyze the congestion and curtailment, LMP basis risks, and other economic impacts of renewable resource integration in US wholesale markets including PJM, MISO, SPP and ERCOT.

Nima is a power system engineer for the Power System Advisory group and supports the generation interconnection team. He is adept in performing steady-state, dynamic, transient, short-circuit, fault analysis and model development for renewable and conventional generation resources including solar, storage, wind, and hybrid systems for medium and large power system networks as part of grid expansion analyses, North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) compliance requirements and/or ISOs’ interconnection or transmission planning guidelines. Software skills include: PSSE, PSLF, ASPEN, PSCAD, ETAP, MATLAB/SIMULINK.

Joining DNV in September as a Solar Energy Analyst, Amy conducts energy production estimates for utility-scale solar sites. Amy received her master's in Biosystems Engineering from the University of Arizona, where she researched solar energy for off-grid greenhouse crop production. Outside of work, Amy loves gardening, yoga, and playing soccer.

Gautam is a Project Manager on the Distributed Generation (DG) Solar Independent Engineering (SIE) team based in Toronto, Canada. Gautam has over 6 years’ experience working on utility scale, C&I and residential solar & storage projects across the United States. Before joining DNV, Gautam worked as a Project Development Engineer with a global Independent Power Producer, leading multiple assignments on utility scale solar PV projects. His experience includes energy yield assessments, engineering designs, engineering procurement construction (EPC) tender package, fatal flaw analysis and review of project contracts, technology and financial models. Gautam holds a Master of Engineering from Arizona State University and a Master of Business Administration from HEC Montreal.

Chris has recently joined DNV as an Assistant Project Manager on the Wind Independent Engineering team. Based in Montreal, he obtained his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Concordia University out of his passion for cars and motorcycles. He brings his experience from having worked different roles across various power generating applications – this includes aeroderivative gas turbines, remote cogeneration plants, and hydroelectric power plants. In his new role, Chris is now eager to apply his diverse skillset in the wind turbine industry and continuing his work in the transition towards renewable energy.

Danielle George joined the North America Wind Independent Engineering (IE) team as a Project Consultant. Danielle was previously in a 3-month fellowship hosted by DNV through the Hiring Our Heroes Program, which matches transitioning service members with industry to facilitate their navigation of the new world of civilian employment. Danielle recently retired from the U.S. Navy after serving for over 35 years in various operational, engineering and acquisition positions. From her career in the Navy, Danielle brings comprehensive experience in program management, defense operations, engineering, and all facets of Department of Defense acquisition while being a proven subject matter expert in surface warfare, shipbuilding and various weapon systems. Danielle earned her M.S. in Naval and Mechanical Engineering from Naval post Graduate School. She currently resides in Alexandria, VA with her super friendly cats. In her free time, Danielle enjoys hiking, cycling, gardening, reading, cooking and dining out with friends.

Ms. Kalu is an Associate Project Manager for the Wind IE Group, DNV Energy Systems in Austin, TX. In this position she assists different Wind projects to get investor funding through reviewing contract certificates, organizing and coordinating the technical discipline reviews and ensuring customer satisfaction. Originally from Nigeria, she moved to the states in 2014 and obtained her Bachelor’s in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Prairie View A & M University, where she conducted research exploring the challenges in deep-sea floating Offshore Wind Turbines. She previously worked as a project engineer and quality coordinator with Kiewit, building a secondary water treatment expansion for the city of Portland, OR.

Eileen Mendoza is a Wind Turbine Engineer with two years of experience in the wind industry with a current focus on the North American onshore market. Eileen joined the IE Wind Technology group at DNV in June 2022 taking on due diligence work for both new and operational wind projects. Her responsibilities include independent turbine technology risk assessment, site suitability studies, O&M failure rates and cost projections, construction monitoring, and operational turbine downtime and outlook review. Eileen is also involved in blade-related work including blade inspections, blade damage assessments, as well as blade manufacturing audits. Prior to joining DNV, Eileen had 18 months of experience in Wind O&M providing technical support to a $3.5M+ blade inspection and repair campaign.