By: Geoff Johnson
A month after Johnson Energy Connection (JEC) and a month before the end of the fall semester – some of us in the Energy Club started talking. We brought so many great companies to campus for JEC in October. What about those cutting-edge companies who couldn’t come? We wanted to see first-hand what they were up to, and what trends they see going forward in the cleantech industry. We decided the Bay Area was the place to do just that.
We organized visits over a four day period in December to a diverse set of firms working in solar, energy management, energy storage, and clean energy finance, among other areas. These firms included Bloom Energy, Building Robotics, First Solar, Greentech Capital Advisors, Lucid, Opower, NRG, the Roda Group, SolarCity, Stem, and SunEdison.
The visits provided a unique opportunity for seven Johnson students to hold conversations with some of the most innovative companies in the cleantech space. Not only did these visits provide an opportunity to ask questions and learn about career opportunities, but they exposed us to new business models and technologies – from Lucid’s cloud-based building management system, buildingOS, to Building Robotics’ office climate control software, Comfy.
The Energy Club is excited to continue engaging with these firms as it plans for JEC in the fall of 2016, and as Cornell students graduate and head off to work for and propel these companies into the future of the cleantech industry.