#198: Rob van Haaren (Proximal Energy) — Powering The Solar Revolution

Rob van Haaren is a Dutch-born entrepreneur and CEO of Proximal Energy, a Cleveland-based SaaS company transforming asset management for solar and energy storage projects. Rob has long been interested in renewable energy engineering — he holds a Master’s from Columbia University in Earth and Environmental Engineering and a PhD from Columbia as well with a focus on utility-scale energy storage optimization and engineering. He also has over a decade of experience blending bridging academia and industry, working as a photovoltaic and storage analyst at First Solar. Since founding Proximal, Rob leads a remote AI-driven team to deliver advanced analytics and agentic tools that help large asset managers optimize performance and reliability in utility-scale projects spanning multiple gigawatt hours of storage. In addition to his work at Proximal, he is also an Expert in Residence at BRITE Energy Innovators, which we’ve heard about from Rick Stockburger back on Episode 161. As you’ll hear in our conversation today, Rob is an engineer, a problem solver, and a deep thinker who is passionate about transforming the way society manages utility-scale energy, and we’re lucky to now have him as a founder in Cleveland! ----- LINKS: - https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-van-haaren/ - https://proximal.energy/ ----- SPONSORS: Impact Architects & Ninety Impact Architects & Ninety Lay of The Land is brought to you by Ninety. As a Lay of The Land listener, you can leverage a free trial with Ninety, the platform that helps teams build great companies and the only officially licensed software for EOS® — used by over 7,000 companies and 100,000 users! This episode is brought to you by Impact Architects. As we share the stories of entrepreneurs building incredible organizations throughout NEO, Impact Architects helps those leaders — many of whom we’ve heard from as guests on Lay of The Land — realize their visions and build great organizations. I believe in Impact Architects and the people behind it so much, that I have actually joined them personally in their mission to help leaders gain focus, align together, and thrive by doing what they love! As a listener, you can sit down for a free consultation with Impact Architects by visiting ia.layoftheland.fm! ----- Stay up to date by signing up for Lay of The Land's weekly newsletter — sign up here. Past guests include Justin Bibb (Mayor of Cleveland), Pat Conway (Great Lakes Brewing), Steve Potash (OverDrive), Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group), Lila Mills (Signal Cleveland), Stewart Kohl (The Riverside Company), Mitch Kroll (Findaway — Acquired by Spotify), and over 200 other Cleveland Entrepreneurs. Connect with Jeffrey Stern on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreypstern/ Follow Jeffrey Stern on X @sternJefe — https://twitter.com/sternjefe Follow Lay of The Land on X @podlayoftheland https://www.jeffreys.page/