Dr. Shihab Kuran, President and CEO of Petra Solar, the internationally renowned cleantech company based in New Jersey, is one of the featured panelists at the High-Level Conference on Energy at the United Nations on Friday, Sept. 17, at the UN headquarters in New York City. Dr. Kuran is speaking about shaping the future with solar energy, a topic that goes to the heart of Petra Solar, which is the market leader in grid-tied, pole-mounted, distributed solar generation systems for utilities.
“towards cleaner, more sustainable, more accessible energy”
The theme of the all-day energy conference is “towards cleaner, more sustainable, more accessible energy” and seeks to create a road map for how countries, governments and the private sector can work together to produce energy accessibility and sustainability to benefit all nations and peoples.
“The disaster in the Gulf of Mexico highlights the need – indeed the imperative – to find safe, affordable, abundant and reliable forms of energy,” Dr. Kuran said. “We are in a fight for the future. Innovative solutions are waiting to be unleashed across the spectrum of renewable energy technologies. We need to free up investment in R&D so we can move innovative ideas from the drawing board and onto the electric grid. Now is the time to shape the future instead of letting the future shape us.”
More information on the conference can be found at http://www.theworldenergy.org/beta/node/321.
Petra Solar, founded in 2006 by Dr. Kuran, is the pioneer of the SunWaveTM, a grid-tied, pole-mounted, distributed solar generation system. The SunWave system combines solar energy with smart-grid communications and electric grid enhancement functions to create a comprehensive utility grade solution for utilities. Investors have demonstrated confidence in Petra Solar, providing $54 million in private capital since 2007.
Petra Solar is fulfilling a $200 million contract with PSE&G, New Jersey’s largest utility, which is installing 200,000 of Petra Solar’s SunWave systems on street light and utility poles in 300 New Jersey municipalities. This is the largest solar electric project under construction in the country. In the process, Petra Solar’s workforce has grown from 15 employees in the spring of 2009 to 150 employees, a ten-fold increase.
Petra Solar’s success in solar energy has just been recognized by U.S. Department of Energy and Sandia National Laboratories, which awarded Petra Solar the prestigious Solar Energy Grid Integration Systems (SEGIS) contract as part of the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Program. The contract brings to $5.8 million the amount of federal funding granted to the clean tech company that pioneered smart solar on a pole. Through the contract, Petra Solar will extend its development of electric grid stabilization, micro-grid and smart grid technologies which will enable utilities to manage the massive increase in renewable energy deployment expected as the need for fossil fuel alternatives grows.
More information about Petra Solar can be found at www.petrasolar.com.
