Episode 56: Powering Up: AI and the Energy Industry with John Carrington, Stem Inc.

Extreme weather, aging grids, power storage and distribution; these are just some of the challenges that clean energy is stepping up to solve. And companies like Stem are at the forefront, with cutting edge AI-driven services.

Today we hear from John Carrington, CEO of Stem Inc. John leads the energy storage and analytics movement at the company and has more than 25 years of leadership experience in technology, energy, and industrial companies.

He came to Stem from MiaSolé, the world’s largest CIGS-based thin film solar company, where he was CEO and Director. Prior to that, John was the Executive Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at First Solar, growing the company from 250 million to more than 2 billion dollars in open markets in the US, Asia, and Europe.

John also spent over 16 years at General Electric, most recently as the General Manager and Chief Marketing Officer of GE Plastics. He was part of a small executive team that executed on the 12 billion dollar sale of GE Plastics to SABIC in 2007.

Tom Ryan sat down with John to talk about his interesting career trajectory and the huge runway he has in front of him with Stem.

Highlights:

John discusses how he got his start in the energy field (2:39)
How John ended up at Stem, and what the company does (4:38)
How Stem fits into the larger energy transition (7:27)
John talks about the ground-breaking software that Stem has built and the real-life use cases (8:42)
Stem’s total addressable market (11:56)
How the Inflation Reduction Act is benefiting energy storage (13:32)
The ease of “going solar” today (15:02)
Stem’s partnership with In Charge, an EV charging infrastructure solution(16:36)
John talks about Stem’s truly innovative approach (18:30)
The benefits of being a public company for Stem (19:22)
How John is positioning Stem in this challenging economic time (19:54)
The key drivers for margin expansion in the next few years (21:21)
The backlog for 2022 vs. 2021 (22:37)
John talks about his great team (25:04)
Stem’s approach to capital allocation (26:03)
John’s outlook for energy storage in the next three to five years (27:20)
John’s most important mentors (28:45)