SunSpec Alliance Names Blu Banyan CEO Jan Rippingale to its Board of Directors
Visionary Thought Leader for Solar Industry Digital Transformation Added to Help Drive SunSpec’s Next Phase of Growth
April 7, 2023, SAN JOSE, Calif. — The SunSpec Alliance and Blu Banyan Inc. today announced the appointment of Jan Rippingale to SunSpec’s Board of Directors. Rippingale serves as the CEO of Blu Banyan, a leading cloud-based business management software provider for the solar and construction industry. Rippingale is also the co-chair of the Orange Button Workgroup, a program launched as part of the U.S. Department of Energy SunShot Initiative, that is enabling the automation of sales, design, construction, and supply chain management in the solar and energy storage industry.
“We are excited to welcome Jan to the SunSpec Board of Directors,” said Tom Tansy, Chairman of the SunSpec Alliance. “Jan has been a driving force towards the goal of reducing the soft costs of solar installation by streamlining the collection, management, and exchange of data, and the creation of standardized datasets such as the AHJ (Authority Having Jurisdiction) Registry. She has also been instrumental in leading integrations with commonly used solar business applications, while strengthening cybersecurity capabilities, across the distributed Solar PV value chain.
“The U.S. Distributed Energy Resource (DER) industry, including solar, energy storage, and electric vehicle charging, has been constrained by high soft costs. Fully two-thirds of the cost of a typical distributed energy system is soft costs comprised of supply-chain management, customer acquisition, permitting, interconnection, installation labor, and overhead,” said Rippingale. “These costs can be reduced by at least 30% and system quality can be increased by more accurate data exchange. The SunSpec Alliance and the Orange Button Initiative, are catalysts for reducing soft costs and that is why I am so excited to join the company’s board,” Rippingale stated.
Rippingale’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company is a market leader in the solar industry. Its SolarSuccess software is the first fully integrated business management software for solar installers, enabling them to scale their business, protect and grow margins, drive productivity, and manage solar projects more profitably. SolarSuccess integrates seamlessly with the Orange Button AHJ Registry, Product Registry, SolarAPP+, and over 20 other solar applications, providing solar installers the efficiencies of scale to deploy more solar faster.
“For more than a decade SunSpec has been a leading developer of core information standards, SunSpec Modbus, IEEE 2030.5, and Orange Button, that are shaping the Distributed Energy Resource (DER) market,” said Dylan Tansy, Executive Director of the SunSpec Alliance. “As SunSpec’s primary focus shifts from developing standards to driving adoption, Jan’s leadership, energy, and passion for our shared mission are a welcome addition to the SunSpec board of directors,” Tansy added.
With the addition of Ms. Rippingale, the SunSpec board now consists of global leaders: Mike Bourton, founder and VP of Business Development at Kitu Systems; David Erhart, founder and Head of Technical Standards at STEM Energy, Vish Ganti, VP of Product, Autogrid; Hannes Knopf, Head of Business and Portfolio Strategy at SMA; Larry Truong, Product Manager of Solar and Energy Storage at TMEIC; and Thomas Tansy, CEO of DER Security Corp and Chairman of SunSpec Alliance.
About Blu Banyan
Blu Banyan is an enterprise cloud-based business management solutions company helping digitally transform small and mid-sized businesses to optimize operations and deliver metrics that drive growth and profitability.
Blu Banyan’s flagship, product, SolarSuccess, is the leading solar business management software in the industry today, used by over one-third of the top 100 residential solar installers in the U.S.
For more information, visit www.blubanyan.com.
About the SunSpec Alliance
SunSpec Alliance is the open information standards and certification organization for the Distributed Energy Resources industry. SunSpec communication standards address operational requirements of solar and energy storage on the smart grid to reduce cost, promote technology innovation, and accelerate industry growth.
Global leaders from Asia, Europe, and North America are members of the SunSpec Alliance. Membership is open to corporations, non-profits, and individuals. For more information about the SunSpec Alliance, or to download SunSpec specifications free of charge, please visit www.sunspec.org.
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