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James Mendenhall

Solar Ops Manager
Deriva Energy
Stokes, North Carolina

James Mendenhall, Solar Operations Manager II for Deriva Energy. A native of eastern NC, I grew up working summers on my uncles tobacco farm. When I turned 16, I started bagging groceries at the local Piggly Wiggly. I graduated from Bear Grass High School in 1994 at 17, and joined the US Navy a few weeks later. During processing, I had volunteered for submarine duty. The rate I chose to persue was Submarine Sonar Technician.
The next 20 years, I served on four fast attack submarines, three out of Norfolk, and one out of San Diego. I was in Sonar Division on all boats, but on my last sea tour, I did serve as the ships 3MC (Maintenance Manager) for a major emergent availability. I had two shore duties. The first was IUSS out of Dam Neck, and the second was Norfolk Ship Support Activity out of Norfolk.
I retired in 2014 at the young age of 37. I came back home to NC to look for work. My first job was in construction of three solar fields in my local area. I wasn't aware before, but solar in NC was starting to really pick up. There were major federal and state incintives that were helping solar really boom. Knowing that someone had to maintain these sites once they were built, I started to apply for jobs in solar online. After construction came to an end in my area, I had applied for other jobs as well using a couple of veteran head hunter companies. I started working in Birmingham at a place called Kamtek. There I worked with robots to make body parts for Mercedes. I worked there about three months, and Duke Energy hiring managers asked if I would like to interview for a position in NC. After the interview, I accepted a position as a Solar Technician. This position was in a new Commercial Renewables portfolio that Duke Energy had recently started up for commercial wind and solar.
I started my new career in solar in early 2015. Looking back now, this was the perfect timing for me. I had just left a very structured and procedural lifestyle serving on submarines to an environment where there were a lot of smart and dedicated people not exactly as structured as they knew they need to be. North Carolina had just recently jumped from number 48 to number 2 as far as state rankings in solar production. After my first year and half as a technician, I was promoted to Planner-Scheduler for my area. There were 5 Planners for Solar across the country. Together we had over 65 sites with various inverter and tracker technologies. Together we worked together to develop preventative maintenance plans for each technology, standardize the work management system, and work controls. In 2018, the Ops Manager that I worked with left the company and I was asked to fill in until they found a replacement. Later that year, I was fortunate enough to take on the role full time. Since then, I've been the lead on a corrective maintenance procedure team and a procedural Hazardous Energy Control (HEC) program. In October of 2023, Duke Energy sold the entire wind and solar commercial solar portfolio to Brookfield Renewables. We broke away from Duke Energy as a standalone company named Deriva Energy.
Since the sale, nothing has really changed. We continue to look for ways to improve and grow.

Disclosure information not submitted.

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