For over 30 years, Stuart Brannigan has been involved in the world of PV, from the beginnings of the industry, when solar panels were the 36 celled 28Wp battery-charging workhorses of the developing world to today when the International Energy Authority crowned Solar “The new King of Energy”. Throughout this time, he has consistently been a staunch advocate of the industry and a fervent speaker to the global opportunities and simple solutions that photovoltaics provide for the constantly shifting global energy demand.

For close to 25 years Stuart successfully lead some of the sector giants (BP Solar, Yingli and LDK) but in his latter career he has chosen a different path to contribute to the PV industry development. Stuart believes that for true mass market acceptance and adoption of PV as a consumer product we must move away from the traditional installer- and distributor-chosen model of PV mega player brands to something that the end user can readily recognise and more importantly trust. For this reason, in 2015 together with three partners he founded Solar Solutions, of which he is CEO. Solar Solutions owns the commercial rights to produce, market and sell solar products bearing the domestic appliance consumer brands of AEG and Electrolux across more than 40 countries. The product range delivers panels, inverters, monitoring and the next game changer domestic storage solutions. Both AEG and Electrolux brands have a more than a hundred years of brand and engineering history and enjoy a huge reputation and brand awareness among consumers which Solar Solutions believe are key to making solar accessible to end consumers. In evidence of this Solar Solutions sales volume has averaged more than 50% growth year on year.

Stuart loves the fascinating multi-cultural whirlwind that is the solar industry and enjoys nothing better than being in the centre of discussions on the next emerging technology, the next manufacturing hot bed or the next growth market. If you ask him what gets him out of bed every morning, he will tell you that he will not stop until every end customer talks about Solar PV with the same enthusiasm as they do about the next smart phone release or the next luxury car launch.

Stuart was for more than six years an active board member of the EPIA (predecessor of Solar Power Europe) and throughout his whole career has brought his enthusiasm for solar energy to conferences and events in countries as far as Australia, South Africa and Chile, and the insight of his industry experience to prestigious forums such as Financial Times briefings, Bloomberg presentations and the Skoll World Forum, with the goal of making the audiences’ “solar experience” not only informative, but also entertaining and enjoyable.

He is relishing the challenge of furthering the renewables word through his committee member role with Joint Forces for Solar.