Andy Tang, Wartsila’s VP of energy storage and optimization, has had a winding road on the path to being a force for global decarbonization. He started in finance and telecom, becoming focused on optimizing infrastructure. He’d spent time in advisory roles, but wanted to pivot to a more direct leadership and ownership role.
Two bridge roles helped him along the journey. He left telecom and joined Intel, which was working on a competitor to 4G, getting him much more into wireless technologies. Then he jumped to Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), the large northern California company that was deploying a smart meter network, and wanted his wireless and business modeling chops.
Once the smart metering data started rolling in, the question became what do you do with the knowledge of when electricity is being used in a more fine grained way? PG&E’s EV charging analysis, for…