Speakers
Vishal Shah - Managing Director & Senior Analyst Alternative Energy, Deutsche Bank
Deutsche Bank has selected Vishal Shah as its managing director for its US-based alternative energy and semi cap equipment divisions. One of the leading solar market analysts, Shah came to Deutsche Bank from Barclays Capital. Vishal has been an equity analyst covering solar and semiconductor equipment sectors since 2002 at firms such as Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley. He was ranked the No. 1 Alternative Energy analyst in the 2009 and 2010 Institutional Investor All America Research Survey. Before joining Wall Street, Vishal worked in the semiconductor equipment industry at Applied Materials. Vishal earned a B.Tech degree in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology and an M.B.A from INSEAD, France.
Karen Breytenbach - Senior Project Advisor PPP Unit, Department of National Treasury
Karen Breytenbach is a Senior Project Advisor in the Public Private Partnership (“PPP”) Unit of the National Treasury of South Africa and Head of the Finance Desk. The National Treasury PPP Unit has a dual role as the regulator of PPPs and the provider of technical assistance to national, provincial departments and local government, and public entities.
Currently, Karen is involved in accommodation, rental housing, power generation and schools PPP projects. She is also part of the team responsible for the development of the standardized toolkit for accommodation projects.
Previously Karen was at the Development Bank of Southern Africa, involved in the private financing of infrastructure projects such as the earlier toll roads, water projects and the Mozambique gas pipeline.
Edwin Koot has been active in the Solar Energy business since 1994. Through his own companies Ekomation and Easysolar Edwin built up a lot of practical knowledge about the Dutch national situation and the international solar energy market.
With the foundation of his company Solarplaza in 2004, Edwin started building a broad informationplatform focused on the international solar energy market and the expansion of his large network of contacts and relations. By organizing international conferences and trade missions to production facilities; publishing in-depth market reports and supporting businesses in finding valuable contacts, Solarplaza has positioned itself as an important player in the PV industry.
Mario Zen - Vice President Business Development, LDK Solar
Mr. Zen has been V.P. Business Development LDK Solar since November 2006, and M.D. of LDK Solar Europe Holding Lux since 2009. LDK Solar is a Chinese Solar manufacturer listed at the NYSE with an estimated revenue in 2010 of 2,0 Bil USD. The company is one of the world's cost leaders in solar manufacturing, featuring one of the largest fully integrated production facilities of the world.
With over 20 years of experience in Business Development in both Europe and Asia, Mario has developed, established and organized new markets in Europe, India and in Canada for the company.
Currently he is leading a European team that's building LDK Solar PV Projects and Modules distribution team that's partnered up with some of the major European EPC companies.
Dick Berlijn - Managing Director, Subsolar
Dick Berlijn is Subsolar's owner and managing director. Dick is a sales and business development professional with over 7 years experience in the B2B sector in the European and North African region. Subsolar has been active in the solar industry in South Africa since 2009 and has developed multiple PV plants. Dick has strong capacities in the field of business modeling, financial analysis, stakeholder management and project development. Dick has a Master in Science from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and is currently also enlisted at the Executive MBA program at Warwick Business School.
Peet Du Plooy - Programme Manager: Sustainable Growth, Trade & Industrial Policy Strategies
Peet du Plooy is a mechanical engineer turned sustainability activist. He started his career working on combustion engineering for some of the world’s largest coal power stations at Eskom, then moved into the NGO world, first working on trade and investment at WWF-South Africa and lately on sustainable growth at TIPS, a think-tank which provides independent policy research and development to the public sector. Peet has experience in energy, transport, information technology and the economics of sustainability.
Click here for Solarplaza's Interview with Peet du Plooy about the South African solar PV market.
Scott Brodsky - Partner, Dewey and Leboeuf
Scott Brodsky is an energy and projects partner in the Johannesburg office of Dewey & LeBoeuf. He has more than two decades of experience advising sponsors, project companies, financiers, governments and financial advisors on projects in Africa, the United Kingdom, Western, Central and Eastern Europe, the Indian sub-continent and Asia. He has advised on a broad range of projects in the power, renewables, oil and gas, transport and other infrastructure sectors. Scott is described as ‘immensely talented’, with ‘excellent interpersonal skills’ and as a 'regulatory expert' in the 2011 UK Legal 500 guide, where he is ranked for power (including renewables) projects and work in emerging markets. Scott also advises on restructurings and insolvencies arising out of project financings, and on the acquisition and disposal of project assets. 
Omar Vajeth - Head of Power and Energy, ABSA Capital
Omar Vajeth is the Head of the Power and Energy division at ABSA Capital. Absa Capital is the investment banking division of Absa Bank Ltd. As an affiliate of Barclays Capital (the investment banking division of Barclays PLC, which acquired a controlling stake in the Absa Group Limited in 2005), Absa Capital is in the enviable position of being one of the few investment firms in the country able to leverage an extensive global network to provide a full suite of financing, investment and advisory solutions.
Ayanda Nakedi - Senior General Manager, ESKOM Renewables
Ayanda Nakedi has held the following positions within Eskom; Key Sales and Customer Services and Distribution Division, CEO of Eskom Development Foundation, and General Manager of Strategy, Technology and Assurance at Generation Division. From 1 April 2011 she was appointed as Senior General Manager to head up Eskom Renewables business.
She has strong knowledge of Eskom generation technology mix, setting generation business strategy, management of investment planning process, and concomitant performance areas, indicators and measurements. This includes assurance of optimum contribution of power generation to electricity supply value chain, through robust life cycle management processes. With the advent of Independent Power Producers (IPPs), competition will require Eskom to produce electricity even more competitively.
Dr. Christopher Haw - Chairman, South African Photovoltaic Association (SAPVIA)
Dr. Christopher Haw is the chairperson and founding member of the South African Photovoltaic Industry Association (SAPVIA), as well as the director and co-founder of Aurora Power Solutions (APS), a photovoltaic (PV) project development and consulting company established in South Africa in 2008.
Since PV was omitted from the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) draft of October 2010, Chris has been focused on driving the foundation of SAPVIA to meet its objectives and, in conjunction with his colleagues on the management board, he successfully contributed to the lobby for the inclusion of PV in the IRP, now to the level of 1450MW up to 2030. This lobby included setting up and attending government meetings with key stakeholders at the Treasury, DoE, DTI, Eskom, SARI and DPE, amongst others.
Natasha Wally - Assistant Vice President, Marsh
Natasha currently works in the risk solutions team with specific responsibilities for programme design and strategy implementation for major clients including infrastructure, rail. energy, manufacturing and mining. This involves team management, planning and execution on programme design and delivery. Natasha has 13 years in depth experience in the short term insurance industry including insurance broking and alternative risk financing. Her experience extends to include responsibilities as a Group Compliance Officer for a leading alternative risk financing insurer. 
Velaphi Msimang - Chief Director: Hydrogen and Energy subprogramme, Department of Science and Technology
Dr Velaphi Msimang is the General Manager: Hydrogen and Energy subprogramme for the Department of Science and Technology. Previously he was a senior researcher at the Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research where he worked for the Natural Resources and the Environment division. He was employed by Sasol as a process engineer and began his career as a chemical engineer at the CSIR. He obtained his PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Cape Town in 2004. He was also awarded a Fullbright scholarship to study a Master of Engineering Studies.
Xavier Daval - Founder & CEO, KiloWattsol
Xavier Daval is the Founder and CEO of KiloWattsol. Ever since its launch in 2007, KiloWattsol has worked its way up to become one of the most experienced providers of solar yield assessment in Europe. Over the last twelve months, the company has provided yield reports for PV projects of all sizes and configurations with a cumulated nominal power of over 1GWp on four continents. Besides, KiloWattsol diversified into project optimization and provides other specialist services, such as site commissioning and due diligence. The company's experience is based on more than 10 years of pure scientific research and is a spin-off of France's leading engineering school for building science, ENTPE. The company's core competencies are climate analysis and computer simulation. Before founding KiloWattsol, Xavier Daval was the European Director of OK International, a world leading manufacturer of tools for the electronics industry and subsidiary of Dover Corp.
Dennis Gieselaar - Managing Director & Co-founder Oskomera Solar Power Solutions
Dennis Gieselaar is a Co-Founder and the current Managing Director of Oskomera Solar Power Solutions B.V., a division of Oskomera Group – an organization of companies that specialize in developing the building envelope of high-end commercial buildings, including facades, roofs, and steel works. In his current role, Gieselaar is responsible for all of the organization’s solar photovoltaic (PV) activities and he has established Oskomera Solar Power Solutions as one of the leading solar PV engineering / procurement / construction (EPC) contractors in the Netherlands for large-scale projects, as well as a leading distributor of PV equipment.
Click here for Solarplaza's Interview with Dennis Gieselaar about the South African solar PV market.
Arndt E. Lutz is Director of Development and Legal Affairs, Europe for REC Systems. Mr. Lutz has deep industry knowledge of the renewable energy project development and project financing industry, and has been responsible for landmark solar PV projects both in the United States and in Europe. Prior to joining REC in 2010 Mr. Lutz was with E.ON Climate and Renewables and with the Conergy Group where he was the Managing Director of Conergy’s US development unit Epuron LLP. Mr. Lutz is a lawyer by training and has received law degrees from Fordham Law School, New York and the law school of Freiburg University, Germany. He practiced law from 1998 through 2005. Mr. Lutz is a dual US and German citizen.
