Cliff Aigbotsua oversees the O&M, commercial, and other contractual aspects of Nightpeak’s operating portfolio of conventional power and battery storage assets. He comes to Nightpeak with more than thirteen years of valuable experience in thermal engineering, operations analytics, plant optimization, contract administration and negotiation, plant O&M, and P&L management across the power generation industry, and specifically gas-fired power and utility-scale solar. His career started in 2011 when he was hired from College Station to join Calpine Corporation at their Houston office. At the premier power company, he was involved with thermal performance testing and optimization for all the PPA and merchant facilities, as well as operations analytics, and commissioning of several power plants across Calpine’s 27 GW portfolio. He also facilitated several multi-million-dollar capital projects involving leading OEMs and EPCs in several power plants across the US.
In 2016, Cliff joined Chicago based J-Power USA as a Director of Asset Management and Optimization; supporting the Japan based parent company, EPDC, with its long-term strategy to acquire, develop, and operate power generation facilities in North America. More specifically, he led several aspects of the development and commissioning of a 1,200 MW facility in Illinois. Using machine learning, Cliff developed and managed algorithms that tracked plant KPIs to aid condition-based maintenance (CBM) strategy for three facilities with a combined output of 3,500 MW. As an Asset Manager, he managed a tolling gas fired facility in California, and managed variable O&M pricing analytics to aid the dispatch of two facilities in Illinois critical to the PJM grid with a combined capacity of 2,550 MW.
He has been fortunate to see asset management evolve from several vantage points in the last decade making him vital in the asset performance management strategy at Nightpeak. Cliff earned a B.Sc. (Hons) Degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Lagos (Nigeria), a M.S. Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Texas A&M University, and an MBA from Carey Business School at The Johns Hopkins University. He is also a registered Professional Engineer in the state of Texas.
