Software Motor Company (SMC) has hired Apple’s former Global Energy Team Leader Mike Petouhoff as its vice president of business development.
Petouhoff brings more than 30 years of energy efficiency, renewable energy and sustainability expertise to SMC, which is revolutionizing the electric motor industry with a Smart Switched Reluctance Motor that delivers energy savings 20% to 50% higher than existing NEMA Premium Efficiency motors, says Ryan J. Morris, SMC’s executive chairman.
At Apple, Petouhoff was Global Energy Team leader, founded the Apple Energy Program and led the effort to reduce to zero its energy carbon footprint by using energy efficiency to reduce consumption and then supplying it with renewable energy. By 2014, Apple reached its 100% renewable energy goal within the U.S. By 2017, it reached that goal worldwide for all of its facilities, labs, stores, and data centers domestically and now in 43 countries. This progress led Greenpeace to recognize Apple as the industry leader for the prior three years in a row up from dead last in 2011.
“One of the key things I learned at Apple was that energy efficiency is the most actionable step companies can take across the board to reduce their carbon footprint,” Petouhoff says. “It is also by far the most economical. Energy efficiency is good for the environment but the savings are really a boost to the bottom line. Within that, components driven by motors—HVACR and related building systems—are the largest target for energy use reduction and smart controls for these motors are the lowest hanging fruit.
He adds: ”When I learned about SMC’s radically more efficient motor with an onboard IoT Smart Building Control Platform which targets the largest consumer of electricity globally and in buildings—and saw the savings being delivered—I was excited to join SMC. The motor will revolutionize an industry that has seen little innovation in the last 40 years.”
After leaving Apple, Petouhoff was director of One Grid Energy Solutions that focused on designing the grid of the future to be energy efficient, renewable, resilient, and reliable with cost-effective approaches that benefit utilities and save ratepayers money.
Before that, Petouhoff was a Zero Net Energy Thought Leader and Project Delivery Manager at Chevron Energy Solutions. In that role, he led a team that won a California Energy Commission grant to design a zero-net-energy town and worked with the developer to build it: the UC Davis West Village.
Petouhoff was also an Energy and Environmental Program Manager and Client Services Manager at CH2M HILL where he led utility and urban planning, construction, and clean energy livable community development efforts.
SMC was founded in Silicon Valley to bring intelligence to electric motors, which consume over 45% of global electricity. SMC’s Smart Switched Reluctance Motor (SSRM) combines patented hardware and software control with modern IoT technologies to enable “the most efficient, reliable, and intelligent motors on the market.”
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