Sonnen, the residential lithium-ion energy storage owned by fossil fuel giant Shell, has announced its founder and CEO will step down from his role.
Oliver Koch (pictured) took over the management of the sonnen Group on 1 October following his promotion from chief operating officer (COO), where he been since 2014. He has also been part of the management board for six years.
He succeeds Christoph Ostermann, Sonnen’s founder, who will continue to advise the management of the firm until the end of the year.
Koch has led the company’s sonnenBatterie product into standardised series production and managed its expansion into the US and Australia.
Ostermann, said: “After more than ten successful years at an incredible pace, the time has come for me to follow new directions.
“With Oliver, Sonnen has gained a CEO who has helped build the company up, who knows it inside out and who will successfully lead it through the next growth stage.”
Koch said: “Our goal was and is to continue to scale up and make our technologies for clean and affordable energy available to an ever-increasing number of people. I am honoured to have received the confidence to continue delivering on Christoph’s vision and lead the amazing team he has built.”
Prior to joining Sonnen, Koch held management positions in companies such as the US solar company Paramount Solar, which was acquired by SolarCity in 2013, and the Bertelsmann Group, where he headed business units in the US, Australia and South Korea.
Fossil fuel giant Shell acquired 100% of German battery storage firm Sonnen for an undisclosed sum in February, 2019.
The move came less than a year after Sonnen raised €60 million ($70.5million) in a financing round led by Shell.
Shell said the deal was aimed at “accelerating the building of a customer-focused energy system in support of Shell’s strategy to offer more and cleaner energy solutions to customers”.
