BYOD
Customer Engagement
Demand Response
EV Charging
Incentive Processing
Program Design
Program Management Automation
Flexible Dispatch
Virtual Power Plants
API Integrations
Platform
Grid-Edge DERMS
Customer Engagement
Demand Forecasting
Whether personally engaging in sustainability initiatives at home or helping utilities find demand flexibility solutions like demand response or EV charging, our new Senior Director of Sales, Brandon Tolle, is eager to learn. Join us in welcoming Brandon to the Virtual Peaker team!
How did your previous life prepare you for Virtual Peaker?
As your career progresses, you gain the benefit of hindsight and learning that progress is usually nonlinear. With that in mind, I have spent most of my career helping client organizations solve what were previously thought of as infrastructure or hardware challenges with software. That experience, paired with my energy experience across multiple facets of the industry, has helped me better anticipate the challenges utilities have in navigating a changing energy landscape as well as solving for reliability, affordability, and sustainability.
Tell us about your role at Virtual Peaker.
As Senior Director of Sales, I’m responsible for coaching and developing our sales team to ensure we are properly identifying the right times and places to engage utilities as they continue their energy transition journey. That isn’t really the first thing, however. I view my role more as trying to see things through the eyes of a distribution utility executive and think proactively about how our functionality, messaging, outreach, and engagement help them make better, timely decisions to bring energy flexibility and affordability to their ratepayers.
How do you personally engage in sustainability efforts?
First and foremost, through mindfulness of how even small purchasing decisions affect up and downstream energy consumption, carbon emissions, and waste. At home, we try not to purchase any single-use items or even items in single quantities, whenever we can avoid it. Buying individually wrapped items, for example, creates additional waste that must be hauled and disposed of, additional trips to the store, additional supply chain delivery events, and in many cases, exponentially increases packaging waste. Additionally, I drive an EV, take advantage of utility TOU programs to reduce peak load issues, etc.
What can you tell us about yourself?
Hmm, an interesting question for a person who loves people and engagement, but also generally seeks anonymity to answer for publication! I would say that overall, I love challenges and figuring out new things. Most of the world is viewed in terms of absolutes, but in reality, the accepted wisdom on many subjects can be improved on. There may not always be a better way to do things, but new technologies and methods are being abstracted almost daily. It pays to test and retest ideas and not be afraid to find out that maybe your opinions or stance on what is possible or best is outdated or possibly misguided.
Come work with us to help change the world!
