The former CEO of Sunnova is now leading global solar services company Otovo. John Berger licensed the Otovo name earlier this year from the Norwegian startup, and the efforts on separate continents have now merged to offer repair services across Europe and the United States.
Berger was appointed CEO of Otovo, and Andreas Thorsheim will take on the role of chief product officer.
“Today marks the beginning of a new chapter for Otovo as we complete this transformative combination and create the world’s first global home energy services company,” Berger said. “More than 200,000 solar and home energy jobs have been lost over the past two years, leaving home and business owners with unprotected systems. Otovo is here to fill that gap with the industry’s first ‘rapid response’ service at a reasonable price. We see strong demand for our innovative services and anticipate growing our installed base of 45,000 homeowners to 250,000 active customers by 2028.”
“The new Otovo is strongly positioned to target the 30+ million homeowners in the U.S. and Europe with installed energy assets,” Thorsheim said. “By combining our large European customer base and service operations with an AI-native technology platform, we are creating a new Otovo that can serve as the backbone of a resilient energy future. Otovo is here to help the vast global market of energy consumers that need better service for their home and business solar systems, battery storage, EV chargers, and generators.”
Otovo is promoting an all-in-one power partner model that unites retail electricity, energy service (operations and maintenance), and grid trading through a cloud-connected virtual power plant. Its AI-native Endurance platform can triage issues and route the right crew in real time, connecting technicians, trucks and installed devices into a single responsive network. The live tracking function closes the loop with customers, while optimized routing raises first‑time‑fix rates while cutting travel, the company claims.
“As we progress from an energy partner to an everything home and business partner, scale will keep making us faster, AI more precise,” Berger said. “Otovo’s network of technicians, trucks and connected devices will turn that precision into real uptime at a lower cost to serve – earning the right to serve more of the home and business market each year.”
Many of Otovo’s U.S. customers will likely be those with leased systems from Sunnova. The company filed bankruptcy in June of this year, and SunStrong acquired Sunnova’s existing portfolio of systems. Based on comments on Solar Power World’s own site, the transition has not gone well, and many Sunnova customers have expressed problems finding support for their solar and storage systems.
Otovo is pitching a subscription-based platform that would offer maintenance, monitoring and operations help to these “abandoned” systems.
Sunnova collapsed because the crook, Berger, refused to honor contracts with customers. So he failed at Enron and Sunnova. Anyone who hires him is a fool.