About

Ophir Orr is a Mechanical Engineer and Project Manager with extensive experience in the Energy, Power and Construction industries, with strong emphasis on Renewable Energy, including large (Utility) scale Solar Thermal and PV, Distributed Generation scale PV as well as current Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) experience as added component to Renewable energy installations or as freestanding utility grid augmentation.

 Experience includes Project Manager, Project Engineer, Owner’s Engineer, Engineering Consultant to support project commencement and activities.  Demonstrated expertise in managing successful energy project development and implementation (solar, solid fuel, Biomass, gas, oil), engineering, construction, startup and commissioning of power plants, Co-Generation plants, and pilot/research facilities) as well as energy plant operations and maintenance. 

Ophir has been managing Utility / Infrastructure, Solar PV / Solar Thermal / Energy Storage projects including Utility Scale, DG and C&I using Ground mount Fixed Tilt and 1X Tracker, Rooftop, Elevated Super-structure, parking lot canopies and BESS for clients ranging from universities to elementary schools, international airports to casino resorts, luxury hotels to public utilities and IOUs, and working with tier-1 EPC contractors such as Bechtel Power, Boeing, the Ryan Company, Swinerton/SOLV, Skanska, M+W Gehrlicher, Borrego Solar, Fluence Energy, Flexgen, Tesla and others.

Ophir currently works as an independent consultant in the capacity of a Project Engineer/Manager for large (Utility) scale Solar PV developers and Owners. Prior to that, he worked at NRG Renewables (2013-2017) as project/construction manager on various Utility, C&I, public sector and community solar projects, and at BrightSource Energy (2009 – 2013) as project Execution engineer on the Ivanpah SEGS project (one of the world’s largest operating solar thermal power plant) and front-end development of several other BrightSource projects (500 – 750 MW) in the US and overseas. While at BrightSource, Ophir had an active role in selecting construction technologies as well as EPC contractors, and negotiating Master services agreements with Tier-1 contractors such as Bechtel Power, CH2MHill, the Boeing Company and others.

Originally trained as a plumber and irrigation specialist, Ophir grew up in the construction industry and by age 27 started his own construction company doing residential and commercial construction and landscaping development. After earning his Mechanical Engineering degree, Ophir started working at Patch Services in the Power Generation sector where he served in the role of Project Engineer and project manager for large scale (500-1000MW) CCGT and SCGT, as well as smaller Co-Gen projects for Muni’s, Education Institutions and C&I clients. He has covered the gamut of project work including EPC – Regulatory Permitting support, Power cycle modeling, Equipment spec and procurement, Detail Engineering, Project Engineer/Manager, Owner’s Engineer and more. 

By 2007, Ophir had decided to shift the focus of his power generation work to renewable energy and, still with Patch Services, started consulting to developers of large scale Solar Thermal projects (100 – 500 MW) such as Siemens, Ariva, BrightSource Energy and others. Ophir’s CSP experience includes working in development and engineering capacity on Central-Tower, Trough and CLFR technologies. His PV experience includes ground-mount fixed-tilt and single axis tracker, roof-top and solar canopies, distributed generation and utility scale projects.