Biography

Brent Harris, P.Eng, is CTO of Sustainable Energy Technologies, and a co-founder of the company. He led the development and commercialization of the company's technologies, from early demonstrations to the launch of its latest Sunergy inverters. Brent has a passion for decentralized energy in general and for solar power in particular. He is an active proponent of changes to the management and regulation of our electric system that will enable greater adoption of decentralized and renewable energy technologies. Brent is a Member of the Board and Treasurer of WADE Canada, and was a Member of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Solar Industries Association from 2005-2008.

Prior to founding Sustainable Energy, Brent was an instrumentation engineer in the oil & gas industry. Brent is a graduate of Queen's University in Applied Science, Electrical Engineering, and was selected as one of Calgary’s Top 40 Under 40 by Avenue Magazine in 2009.

"Decentralized Energy must play a key role in our electricity supply system if we are to have any chance of succeeding in meeting our future electricity needs. Rising populations, rising expectations on quality of life, and the advent of the electric car are all going to put enormous pressure on our electricity infrastructure. Spiraling costs, dwindling conventional energy supplies, emissions concerns, and the sheer time involved between planning and commissioning conventional power plants make them less and less attractive as time goes on. It won’t happen overnight, but these infrastructure assets have a long service life, and there is lots of work to do before DE can deliver a significant portion of our energy, so if we are going to meet the challenge we need to change the decisions and investments we are making today".