Natel Welcomes Yves Rannou to Board of Directors

Natel Energy’s expanded team will continue to fuel its rapid growth and leadership position in the Modern Hydropower industry

Alameda, Calif. — March 17, 2021 — Natel Energy, a provider of sustainable hydropower solutions, today announced the growth of its board of directors with the appointment of Yves Rannou, former CEO of GE Hydropower. He will join six current board members with broad experience across the renewable energy spectrum.

Rannou brings more than 25 years of experience in the renewable energy industry. Most recently, he was the CEO of Senvion, a manufacturer of onshore and offshore wind turbines. Prior to Senvion, Rannou was the president and CEO of GE Renewable Energy’s Hydropower business. Previously, he served as a senior executive at Alstom for 18 years as the Senior Vice President of the Hydropower business and the Senior Vice President of the Wind business until the GE acquisition in 2015.

“We are thrilled to have Yves join Natel Energy’s board of directors, bringing his wealth of knowledge and experience in hydro and renewable energy to support the growth and vision of the company as we pursue big goals in 2021 and beyond,” said co-founder and CEO of Natel Energy, Gia Schneider.

Mr. Rannou will be joining current members of the board including:

• Libby Wayman – an investor with Breakthrough Energy Ventures with previous experience as the Global Director of Ecomagination for GE, and former Director of the Clean Energy Manufacturing Initiative at the U.S. Department of Energy
• Milo Werner – Partner with Ajax Strategies, focused on investing in a sustainable future, and former technology executive at Tesla
• Kevin Deneen – Principal with SE Ventures, a Silicon Valley-based, $600 million venture capital fund backed by Schneider Electric, a global specialist in energy management and industrial automation
• Bob Gates – Co-Owner Wind Stream Properties, former CCO of Clipper Wind, and former SVP of GE Wind
• Michael Mars – Founder of mterra Ventures and Board Member, Mars, Incorporated

Natel Energy has installed two Restoration Hydro Turbines in commercial projects and has a quickly growing installation backlog spanning North America, Europe and other geographies. Natel also announced 100% safe fish passage test results from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) at the close of 2020. Ensuring successful fish passage is a fundamental challenge for hydropower developers and operators. In addition, Natel’s HydroForecast™ solution is informing over 3 GW of hydropower operations in the US and Europe. Natel’s focus for 2021 is delivering on the next several project deployments, including the first such in Europe, to ensure modern sustainable distributed hydropower can be realized across the United States and beyond.

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About Natel Energy

Natel Energy is a California-based company with a mission to mitigate climate change and build climate resilience by providing hardware and software solutions that enable a 100% renewable grid via a hydropower backbone. Climate change is water change, and hydropower is situated strategically at the confluence of climate mitigation and adaptation. Hydropower is a crucial component of a low-carbon, renewable grid because of its reliability, flexibility and complementary generation characteristics to wind and solar. Hydropower projects are also multi-purpose water projects that can be designed to support climate resilient watershed function. Natel’s solutions address cost, operations and environmental performance challenges at the heart of unlocking additional sustainable, reliable hydropower generation – both from the existing fleet and from new project development.