Early next year, Helen Booth, Director of Pricing at Competitive Energy Services will be celebrating 23 years with the company. Helen spends her workdays managing pricing requests for RFPs on behalf clients, along with other client relations functions and activities. Helen’s institutional knowledge and experience benefit clients as well as CES colleagues every day of the year. Helen finds the energy industry and he ever-evolving nature fascinating and considers the CES team her family away from home – attributes both to her long stay with the company. In the interview below, learn about Helen’s early days with CES, the indelible mark it’s left on her heart and life, and on the many creative interests and passions that add to her uniqueness.

“Helen Booth is indivisible from our success at CES. CES started more than 22 years ago by providing strategic electricity procurement services to a group of large energy consumers. So much has changed over the past decades as CES expanded service offerings and increased the number of clients we work with. Helen has grown alongside CES through this entire period - teaching me many things over our 20 years working together - and has calmly and expertly excelled at finding new and more efficient ways to help our clients. Her unmatched experience gained over two decades and many thousands of commodity contracts makes her the “go-to” resource whenever issues arise on the pricing team. Beyond her many contributions to our professional success, Helen’s positive influence on CES culture is notable. CES is extraordinarily lucky to have such a wonderful individual as part of our work family.” – Andrew Price, President & COO 

Join us in congratulating Helen on her milestone anniversary with CES. Here’s to 23 years and beyond! 

Photo by Nina Callanan

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Bowdoin College’s 17,000-panel solar array in Brunswick is now generating enough electricity to meet approximately 45 percent of the College’s annual electrical energy consumption. Located near Bowdoin’s original solar field at the former Brunswick Naval Air Station (BNAS), this solar array is part of the College’s effort to support renewable energy production in Maine and reduce its carbon footprint.

“CES and Bowdoin College have been working together since the very beginning of the College’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions. The Sol Systems project represents a significant piece of the College’s portfolio that go toward matching the College’s annual electricity consumption with 100% Maine-based renewables. CES is excited to see the Sol Systems installation achieve commercial operations after first beginning efforts with the College to develop this project in 2019 when Maine passed new legislation enabling an expanded Net Energy Billing program.” – Matt Gamache, Vice President, Analytics & Operations

On Friday, October 7, several CES Team members volunteered their time at Portland-based Partners for World Health (PWH). The CES crew helped sort, evaluate, and prepare medical supplies and equipment for distribution to individuals, communities, and healthcare facilities in need. PWH collects thousands of pounds of medical supplies every day, all of which need to be evaluated, sorted, and repacked before being sent to under-served populations in the developing world.



CES is committed to giving back to the community and offers team building events for employees throughout the year and provides each employee with volunteer hours that may be used to support organizations close to their hearts in the communities in which they live and work.

CES thanks the folks at Partners for World Health for a great experience – and for the work that you do that makes an impact across the globe. 

Pictured left-to-right: Matthew Gamache, Tarik Cetin, Zack Hallock, Simon Pritchard, Maxwell Webb, Charlotte Del Col, Hannah Parks, Andrew Price

Competitive Energy Services is pleased to announce two recent promotions on its Data Services Team. Anthony Viola and Tyler Watson have been promoted to Associate Manager of Data Services. We are very excited to recognize their contributions to CES over the years and their growth with the company. Congratulations!

Kevin Grieb joined Competitive Energy Services as a Data Analyst in 2022. After an exciting career focused on entomology, Kevin realized his interests were more in line with exploring and working with data and he took steps to start a new chapter in his professional career. With his background in ecology, Kevin was drawn to CES because of his interest in green energy. The aspect of data analysis Kevin finds most enjoyable is performing statistical tests and seeing whether variables are significantly different or not, brainstorming reasons why differences occurred, and developing new tests to run to assess theories. At CES, his areas of focus are net metering and variance tracking, giving him opportunity to apply his statistics knowledge and expertise. Prior to joining CES, Kevin was a Biological Control Technician at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is a long-distance runner, owns a vast music collection, enjoys scuba diving, and is versed in SQL, Tableau, Python, and Excel.

Photo by Nina Callanan

ZACK HALLOCK'S PICK

How to Win Friends & Influence People

by Dale Carnegie

Since its release in November 1936, How to Win Friends and Influence People has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, with annual sales averaging at around 250,000 copies. A 2013 Library of Congress Survey ranked Carnegie’s volume as the seventh most influential book in American history. How to Win Friends and Influence People offers time-tested advice that has carried – and continues to move people up the ladder of success in their business and personal lives. In this book, readers learn: 1. The six ways to make people like you; 2. The twelve ways to win people to your way of thinking; and 3. The nine ways to change people without arousing resentment.

MAX WEBB'S PICK

Europe’s “Not Out of the Woods” Despite Gas Prices Falling to 4-Month Lows

European gas prices may have dropped to levels not seen in more than four months, but this is far from being the end of the energy crisis....



https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/28/energy-crisis-europe-gas-prices-drop-but-could-rise-in-coming-months.html