Zoe Barnard-Rowland
Financial Controller
Zoe has over 20 years of accounting experience and is a Fellow of the Association of Chartered Accountants. Joining PeakGen in January 2019, with her breadth of knowledge and expertise, Zoe is instrumental in identifying and achieving efficiencies across the business. Zoe has previously worked at Axa Insurance, Mears Group, Trinity House and Archant Medium.
In her spare time, Zoe is a keen green bowler and has won multi-county and club titles.
Matt Bird
Commercial Analyst
Matt graduated from Loughborough University in 2018 and joined PeakGen as a Commercial Analyst. Matt’s work focuses on developing strategies for the ancillary service markets and he advises on market pricing and competitor analysis. More recently Matt has been supporting PeakGen with its Business Development functions, modelling new market opportunities for PeakGen.
Operations Administrator
Lesley Chester
PA & Office Manager
Lesley has had over 25 years’ experience as a PA and managing a busy office environment. She is Personal Assistant to Ian Graves and Jon Fairchild and with a further remit to ensure the effectiveness, efficiency and safety operations of the office. Lesley’s previous roles have included working at Eon, Co Op Energy, The Law Society and Capita.
Mark Draper
Executive Chairman
Mark has over 30 years’ experience in the power industry. Most recently he served as Chief Executive of PeakGen, which he co-founded in 2010.
Prior to joining PeakGen, Mark’s career encompassed a broad range of managerial and engineering roles in the power business and particularly at PowerGen plc – the UK energy business with an annual turnover in excess of £6bn. Ultimately he served as the Managing Director of their Generation Business, where he was responsible for over 9,000MW of power generating assets (conventional and CHP), and also for the development of the new Renewable Business.
He has served as a Non-Executive Director of Slough Heat & Power Ltd and Renewable Power & Light plc. Mark is a Chartered Engineer, Fellow of the Institution of Electrical Engineers and a Fellow of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers; he holds a Master’s degree in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering from Cambridge University. He has attended executive training programs at Wharton and Harvard Business schools.
Matt Draper
Senior Operational Engineer
Matt is the Senior Operations Engineer at PeakGen, overseeing the day to day operation and maintenance of PeakGen plants, as well as facilitating the adoption and implementation of new projects. Matt is a Senior Authorised Person and is often in charge of switching down, isolating, earthing and applying permits to plant if they needs testing, maintaining, or replacing.
Jon Fairchild
Chief Financial Officer
Jon has approaching 20 years of experience in the power industry. Most recently he was Finance Director at Ovo Energy, an electricity and gas supplier which grew from 15,000 to 90,000 customers in his tenure.
Prior to joining Ovo, he was Group Finance Director at Good Energy, a 100% renewable electricity and gas supplier where he led the project financing for the re-powering of their wind farm at Delabole, North Cornwall whilst growing the customer base by 5 fold. Whilst at Good Energy, Jon led their listing onto the PLUS market and the associated fundraisings on that market.
Jon trained as a Chartered Accountant with Top 10 firm Baker Tilly and he is a qualified Corporate Treasurer. He is a graduate of Southampton University.
Ian Graves
Chief Executive officer
Ian has over 25 years’ experience in the energy and utility sector. Most recently he was Director of European Business Development at National Grid. In this role he led the development of Electrical Interconnection between the UK and Europe, as well as securing competitive network opportunities and developing options for Distributed Energy and decarbonisation of transport.
Prior to joining National Grid, Ian’s career encompassed a broad range of leadership and engineering roles at Costain, E.ON and Burns McDonnell. He has also enjoyed a secondment with the British Government helping to develop a clean energy policy.
He has served as a Trustee of the Midlands Air Ambulance and holds non-executive or advisory roles with other organisations including Western Power Distribution, Birmingham Symphony Hall and the Energy & Utility Forum. Ian is a Chartered Engineer, Fellow of the Institution of Electrical Engineers and a Fellow of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers; he is also a Chartered Director with the Institute of Directors. Ian is a graduate from Sheffield University, as well as attending executive programmes at Harvard and London Business School.
Dominic Lavery
Head Of Engineering
Dominic joined PeakGen with over 25 years projects experience associated with critical infrastructure such as solar projects, national TV & radio broadcasting, studio centres, data and communications centres and satellite earth stations for organisations such as the BBC, National Grid and Arqiva.
Dominic is a Chartered Engineer with a degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Queen’s University Belfast. He trained with the BBC and has gained broad experience in engineering and managing projects from inception to completion.
Sally Nicholson
Business Development & Engineering
Sally has over 17 years of engineering experience in the energy and utility sector. Prior to joining PeakGen, Sally worked at National Grid where she held various engineering roles. Most recently she was the Technical Manager for the Granite State Power Link project, an AC-HVDC project aimed with transporting 2GW of renewable energy from Canada into New England, USA. Sally has also been an Operations Team Leader for four high-voltage substations in the south Birmingham-Worcester region. As part of this role Sally qualified as a high voltage, low voltage, and mechanical Senior Authorised Person.
With a MEng in Mechanical Engineering and a PGDip in Power Systems Engineering, Sally is a versatile engineer and supports PeakGen with their engineering and business development functions.
Sally has also Founded her own business “This Girl Runs” and has helped thousands of women all over the West Midlands start running in fun and friendly communities.
Simon Pereira
Plant Manager Peterborough
Simon joined PeakGen in 2016 and is responsible for the day to day operations at PeakGen’s largest site; Peterborough. This site consists of 8MWs of battery storage and 20MW of diesel generators. Simon has previously worked for Aggreko and other large temporary generator companies as the Senior Engineer maintaining emergency diesel generators for various DNO contracts. Simon has also served in the British Army as an electrician for 12 years and has been on many overseas tours.
Nick Sillito
Commercial Director
Nick has over 20 years of experience in the power industry and holds an engineering degree from Warwick University. Most recently Nick worked with Uniper’s (formerly Eon) trading business in Germany in a range of roles including Structured Trading, Capacity Markets and Risk Management. Prior to moving to Germany, he was responsible for the forward optimisation of Eon’s UK generation portfolio.
Prior to joining Eon he worked for National Grid, where he initially worked on the design of extensions to the transmission system for the connection of new power stations and then within the commercial division of the system operator.
Operations Engineer