Lay of The Land #198: Rob van Haaren (Proximal Energy) — Powering The Solar Revolution
Rob van Haaren is a Dutch-born entrepreneur and CEO of Proximal Energy, a Cleveland-based SaaS company transforming asset management for solar and energy storage projects.
Rob has long been interested in renewable energy engineering — he holds a Master’s from Columbia University in Earth and Environmental Engineering and a PhD from Columbia as well with a focus on utility-scale energy storage optimization and engineering. He also has over a decade of experience blending bridging academia and industry, working as a photovoltaic and storage analyst at First Solar.
Since founding Proximal, Rob leads a remote AI-driven team to deliver advanced analytics and agentic tools that help large asset managers optimize performance and reliability in utility-scale projects spanning multiple gigawatt hours of storage.
In addition to his work at Proximal, he is also an Expert in Residence at BRITE Energy Innovators, which we’ve heard about from Rick Stockburger back on Episode 161.
As you’ll hear in our conversation today, Rob is an engineer, a problem solver, and a deep thinker who is passionate about transforming the way society manages utility-scale energy, and we’re lucky to now have him as a founder in Cleveland!
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LINKS:
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-van-haaren/
- https://proximal.energy/
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