Profiles of Key Principals and Associates
(click on the name for a brief bio with contact info)
Jason Makansi, Pearl Street
Robert G. Schwieger, PSI Media
Robert C. Swanekamp, HRSG User's Group
Septimus van der Linden, Brulin Associates
William Shanner, RLE Technologies
Kemm Farney, P&L Economics, Inc.
Jeff Schroeter, Genovation Group, Inc.
Raymond Rose
Stephen Smith, CoalSmith
J. K. August, Core, Inc.
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Jason Makansi Jason Makansi, Executive Director of the Energy Storage Council and President of Pearl Street, Inc., is a Columbia University graduate in Chemical Engineering with two decades of experience evaluating |
the technological, business, and regulatory issues governing the entire electricity value chain. Before founding Pearl Street in 2000, Jason served as Director, Power Generation for Myplant.com where his responsibilities included business development, sales, content marketing and staff development. Under his direction, the Power Generation vertical became one of the most vibrant and most visited industry web portals serving its market. As Editor-in-Chief of Power and Electric Power International magazines and contributing editor of Electrical World magazine, and during his 18-year tenure with The McGraw Hill Companies, Jason researched and analyzed every aspect of electricity generation. Bob is President, PSI Media Inc., a Pearl Street affiliate company, and has many years of experience both practicing engineering in the field and serving the electricity industry by participating in and leading the development of technical and business information products for the global energy market. From plant design/project management at the Westinghouse Electric Corporation and the U. S. Atomic Energy Commission and working at the plant level in various oil-fired steam plants to Vice President and Editorial Director for McGraw-Hill's energy magazines, Bob has been involved at every level of the electricity business. For McGraw-Hill, he spent 30 years setting the standard in electricity trade publications. He helped develop and manage magazines, (Power magazine, Electricial World, Energy IT, Electric Power International, and Global Energy Business) web-based news services, conferences, seminars, directories, books, and maps in to serve the English market as well as the Chinese, Russian, and Spanish markets. At PSI Media, Bob helps companies in the electricity industry (1) better position themselves for business success and (2) introduce new products and services to the marketplace. PSI Media's technology focus is on gas turbines and auxiliaries, coal-fired stations, emissions control, distributed generation, transmission, energy storage, and renewables. PSI Media’s activities include publication of objective, subscription-based information products to facilitate the flow of ideas among engineering decision-makers responsible for the design, construction, operation, and maintenance of energy infrastructure from fuel source through application by the end user. Robert C. Swanekamp Rob has held numerous engineering and management positions during a 23-year career in power generation. He served as Electrical Officer onboard a US Navy nuclear-powered cruiser, and as a Startup Engineer and Plant Manager for some of the earliest gas-fired cogeneration facilities in the 1980s. In the 1990s, Rob was an Asset Manager responsible for 12 gas-turbine combined-cycle/cogeneration plants in the western states. In this capacity, he had profit/loss responsibility for 500 MW of capacity, 250 employees, and annual revenues of $300-million. While consulting for major US and Asian power producers, he also worked as Senior Editor and Editor-in-Chief of McGraw-Hill's POWER magazine, and co-authored two McGraw-Hill professional books — "The Sourcebook for Competitive Powerplant Management" and the "Standard Handbook of Powerplant Engineering." For the past six years, Rob has served on the Steering Committee of the HRSG User's Group, the leading professional association focused on heat-recovery steam generators. Through his very active work with this group, he has remained technically proficient in both Frame and aeroderivative gas turbines, and has become recognized as a technical authority on combined-cycle steam systems. He recently edited and published a ground-breaking reference work for the HRSG User’s Group, “Guidelines for the Operation & Maintenance of HRSGs.” Mr. Swanekamp holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan, is a graduate of the US Navy's post-graduate nuclear power school, and is a licensed professional engineer in the state of Michigan. His technical skills are bolstered by his flair for writing, public speaking, and training. Septimus van der Linden With more than 40 years of experience in power generation with three major international companies: Worthington Corporation, Curtiss-Wright Power Systems, and ALSTOM Power, Inc.(BBC, ABB AND ABB ALSTOM), Sep has extensive world-wide experience in power equipment and rotating machinery, strategic marketing and sales management, sales promotion, application engineering, engineering studies and reports, contracting, cost estimating, market analysis, and supervisory responsibility of engineering service and equipment installation. In 2003, he founded his own consulting practice, Brulin Associates, which provides consulting services to the power industry in the area of strategic marketing and application of new technology development, new power concepts, and related functions including technical, legislative, regulatory, environmental and other after market services. Sep works closely with both Pearl Street and the Energy Storage Council. As an associate founder of Celerity Energy, a founder of TEC Associates and Wright Williams & Kelly, Bill is a seasoned and successful entrepreneur. He has been involved in developing custom power solutions for more than 200 critical facilities in the last 20 years. As a founder of TEC Associates, he helped pioneer technologies used in critical environments such as clean rooms, computer rooms and medical and biotech applications. Technologies included lattice electrode humidifiers, on-site modular chemical re-processors and polishers and power transistor uninterruptible power supplies. Bill later helped found Wright Williams & Kelly to promote the use of Cost of Ownership Modeling (COM) in critical production environments. In seeking a superior power quality technical solution, he helped found Statordyne in 1993, which designed and manufactured the most capable and efficient CPS built to date. He is much sought-after expert in strategic planning. Dr. Kemm Farney Dr. Farney is a renowned electricity industry economist, with 30 years experience at firms including Global Insight Inc (formerly DRI-WEFA Inc), Resource Strategies/CRU, NiSource, Davies & Associates, and Management Analysis Company. At NiSource, he was Principal Planning Executive and Corporate Economist, where he built the first workable five-year financial planning model and led merger and acquisition analysis during the high-growth years 1993-1996 in the industry. His most recent work has focused on turnkey sales forecasting business process, economic analysis of large-scale storage, cost benchmarking methodologies, examination of T&D capital and O&M spending by region, and true economics of advanced gas turbine-based projects. Dr. Farney began his Ph.D program at University of California (Santa Barbara) and completed it at Florida State University, where his undergraduate studies were taken. Jeffrey W. Schroeter Mr. Schroeter has 27 years experience as an innovative business executive responsible for the successful creation of over 8,000 megawatts of electric power generation throughout the U.S. His entrepreneurial skill set includes keen development sense for achievable business plans, negotiation of project specific agreements, and identification/completion of all permitting, construction licensing and financing requirements. His expertise ranges across a verity of generation fuel sources – gas fired combined cycle, pulverized coal and lignite fired circulating fluidized bed, and wind generation. He is well known throughout the industry for IPP project development with an attention to the discipline of non-recourse financing. Mr. Schroeter holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Texas A&M University, is a Licensed Professional Engineer, completed postgraduate courses in business and attended The Project Finance Institute. He is past Chair of the ASME International Power Division. He is past President and Board member of the Gulf Coast Power Association. He has numerous awards including being named Dallas Mechanical Engineer of the Year in 1989. Stephen R. Smith Stephen Smith is the principal consultant and lead coal utilization specialist with Coalsmith Consultants. He has 30 years experience in fossil fuel power generation processes, and specializes in the chemistry of coal utilization, with expertise in the processes of coal preparation, analysis, sampling, weighing, bias testing, combustion, and stockpile inventory. Steve received BS Chemistry and MS Engineering Management degrees from the University of Tennessee and is an active member of the American Society for Testing of Materials D5 committee on Coal and Coke. Coalsmith provides expert services as communicator, facilitator, manager and trainer. Managers of coal facilities face challenging issues, such as fuel handling and sampling, emissions control, plant performance, and production cost. Effectively managing these issues and the challenges they bring often requires outside support and expertise. My approach to providing that expertise and adding value to your business includes: Audits, inspections, and surveys to identify improvement opportunities. Customized test programs that incorporate designed experiments to quickly isolate major variables of interest. Benchmarking surveys to identify best practices in your industry Creation of clear, concise written procedures. Development of training materials and on-the-job coaching to help implement the best procedures and practices. Project management support services from conceptual analysis to operation. J. K. August As chief engineer, Jim focuses on processes, system design, practical implementation and engineering. Holding American Nuclear Society (ANS), American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and Society of Maintenance and Reliability Professional (SMRP) memberships, he is a registered PE. Chairing ASME's Power Division Reliability, Availability and Maintainability (RAM) Committee, he co-chairs ANS' New Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP) design committee, sits on ASME's Performance Test Code (PTC) Committee, and develops industrial component maintenance strategy/reliability plans. ASME's RAM committee has sponsored Weibull statistics development method examination, for example, among other theoretical pursuits. Jim wears many hats for CORE, as well as voluntary industry consensus committees - chairperson, lead engineer, marketing director, brainstormer - all in one, CORE's prime minister to industry. He provides marketing, legal, and strategic skills, meeting the company's business objectives, guiding strategy and supporting growth. Concurrent with his many hats and endless travel hours, Jim has never turned down a cup of coffee in his entire life. He claims Navy life taught him one thing - coffee. He can drink any kind, any time - as long as it's black. CORE Inc. provides innovative equipment reliability risk control products and services for process, manufacturing and power facilities who want a simple but complete solutions implementing preventive maintenance strategy (PM). We load complex computerized maintenance management system's (CMMS) PM software with simple, standard-based equipment reliability strategies based upon plant design. Using failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA), root cause failure analysis (RCFA), streamlined RCM and other risk management strategies, our processes quickly deliver efficient, cost-effective condition monitoring plans. |
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