Dr Jordan Parham has been appointed as interim CEO of energy storage firm 1414 Degrees, as the company undergoes a substantial review of its operations following lacklustre results from its thermal energy storage system.
Parham has previously served as the company’s Chief Operating Officer, where he oversaw a restructuring and expansion of the company’s technical development team working on the company’s thermal energy storage system technology.
Prior to working with 1414 Degrees, Parham served as the CEO of the burner and kiln manufacturer FCT-Combustion Asia-Pacific and manager of the Institute for Mineral and Energy Resources at the University of Adelaide.
The ASX-listed 1414 Degrees is developing an innovative thermal energy storage technology, that can be combined with a concentrated solar thermal plant, or other sources of high temperature heat, allowing electricity generation to be firmed and generated across all high demand periods.
Parham will work alongside Marie Pavlik, the CEO of 1414’s subsidiary SiliconAurora, which is focused on the development of the company’s flagship Aurora Project, that will include an integrated 70MW solar PV farm with 150MW of solar thermal generation capacity. The project will also work as a demonstration of the company’s thermal energy storage technology.
The Aurora project in Port Augusta was previously being developed by SolarReserve, as part of a plan to deploy massive solar tower system to produce solar thermal energy, but was ultimately abandoned by SolarReserve after it struggled to attract sufficient investment.
In June, the company released the findings of a review of its energy storage technology, finding that while it had been successful in demonstrating the practical operation of the silicon-based energy storage and recovery system, further work was required to ensure it could continue to operate reliably over the long term.
Since the announcement of the review’s findings, the company’s management structure has undergone a number of changes, including the changes to the company’s board, which is led by executive chairman Kevin Moriarty.
The company hopes that the appointment of Parham as the interim CEO, a position he will hold through to the end of October, will help refocus the company’s project development work, including achieving early revenues from the Aurora project, including the completion of an initial large-scale solar farm.
1414 Degrees expects to commence the construction of the first phase of the Aurora project, the completion of a 70MW solar PV project, in 2021. The company expects to include a battery energy storage system at the site in 2022, with the construction of a pilot of its thermal energy storage system to follow in 2023.
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