NRG Energy Selects Steve McBee as President and CEO of NRG Home

On Nov 13, 2014

Today, Princeton-based NRG Energy announced Steve McBee as the first-ever President and CEO of NRG Home, effective December 1, 2014. McBee and the NRG Home team are tasked with bringing NRG’s vision of empowered energy consumers, generating much of their own electricity with distributed generation, into the home and into the lives of our individual customers, keeping them connected wherever they are, whatever they are doing for as long as they are doing it.

“The clean energy potential of the home is ready to be unlocked through the seamless integration of distributed solar, system power and smart energy automation in a way that will empower the American homeowner and provide resilience against the occasional failings of the increasingly antiquated grid,” said David Crane, President and CEO of NRG Energy. “Steve McBee has a proven ability to change industries, create an innovative business approach and drive reinvention. He is just the leader we need to untether Americans from the socket and all that lies behind it. It is time for the American electric industry to join the 21st century.”

NRG’s consumer electricity business has grown rapidly during 2014. NRG Retail, under Elizabeth Killinger, has grown intrinsically and through acquisitions to serve almost three million retail customers with a growing suite of retail products and services. NRG Home Solar, led by Kelcy Pegler, Jr., has similarly expanded with the acquisition of Pure Energies to be one of the biggest residential solar companies nationwide. Finally, NRG Retail has acquired Goal Zero, bringing the benefits of distributed solar power and storage to every American wherever they live, regardless of whether they are a homeowner.

This rapid growth in footprint and capabilities gives NRG Home the momentum needed to accelerate the race for a clean energy future.

“The world’s biggest problems need the world’s biggest solutions – and addressing global energy challenges is no different,” said McBee. “I am excited to join a company that, under David Crane’s leadership, understands that today’s global energy challenges represent an opportunity to build our business and change lives. The NRG Home business plan is based on a very simple principle – consumers benefit from every investment and innovation available across our business so that their energy is as clean and convenient as they’d like it to be.”

NRG Home’s business model has three tenets:

1. Leveraging the synergies of NRG’s current consumer-facing business units so the company is a hub for all of the clean energy needs of its customers;

2. Creating products and services, simple and seamless, that will empower consumers to have greater control over how they manage their energy usage and their personal energy production;

3. Enabling energy customers to make a difference with their personal energy choices so that they can serve a higher societal purpose while freeing themselves from the limitations of the conventional electricity system.

McBee was identified as a result of NRG’s crowdsourcing initiative launched in August, which received over 700 nominations and identified and hired multiple exceptional candidates for several other critical positions within NRG. Since McBee was nominated by an NRG executive who is not eligible to receive the $100,000 crowdsourcing cash prize, NRG has donated the $100,000 to that executive’s charity of choice,Where Hope Lives.

Related Articles: