Press Release

Atom Power hires leading IoT engineers to enhance features of its solid-state digital circuit breakers

Huntersville, N.C. (Nov. 9, 2021) — Atom Power, manufacturer of the world’s first and only UL listed solid-state digital circuit breaker, announced top IoT engineering hires that will enhance the security and connectivity of its technology which fully leverages available energy resources and provides intelligent energy management to power businesses, electric vehicles, multi-family properties and homes. Atom Power’s core purpose is to deliver infrastructure solutions that enable the electrification of everything.

Mark Ford joined Atom Power as its Lead Firmware Architect in September. Ford has an extensive background in firmware, software, hardware and full-stack development. In his previous role at Duke Energy Corporation, Mark was a senior IoT engineer and was responsible for developing edge computing and hardware. Prior to that, Mark was the Chief Technology Officer of Thorlo, where he implemented engineering solutions that spanned the breadth of process control, data collection, shop floor automation and integration with ERP platforms like SAP and NetSuite.

Matt Deese joined Atom Power in the summer of 2021 as its Vice President of Engineering. Deese established the intelligent lighting controls business within Cree Lighting, building a full-stack software development team and introducing market-disruptive lighting controls and IoT systems. His team launched the company’s first connected lighting products for residential and commercial markets as well as its first Internet of Things (IoT) solution targeted for commercial indoor office, education, and healthcare customers.

“In order to ‘electrify everything’ and use more clean energy, utilities and homebuilders are searching for solutions that provide unparalleled access, visibility and control of critical loads behind the meter, enabling demand response, and seamless integration within existing distributed energy resources,”said Mike Harris, Chief Technology Officer, Atom Power. “Circuit breakers are the technology at the edge of the grid that can manage all of that. Now, Atom Power has the top industry IoT talent to completely disrupt this Edison-era, analog market and replace it with solid-state digital circuit breakers, paving the way to fully digitize our power system.”

Rounding out Atom Power’s IoT leadership team is Tim Strunck, Director of Software Engineering. Strunck has more than  fifteen years of experience in the design, implementation, and management of connected systems. While at Bosch he founded and staffed a department of software, firmware, hardware, and quality assurance engineers for Bosch’s Building Grid Technologies division.

Ford, Deese and Strunck operate under the leadership of Chief Technology Officer, Mike Harris, who joined Atom Power in 2019. Harris spent the past three decades transforming markets in industries such as telecommunications, industrial systems and lighting with companies like Lockheed Martin, Cisco and Cree. Harris led development teams that established Cree as a market leader in LED lighting.

Atom Power’s circuit breakers pave the way for fully digitizing power systems, which are essential to our clean energy future. The circuit breakers are controlled and monitored on a smartphone or computer using the Atom Insight app. Users can virtually see the electrical panel and each circuit breaker on their screen. From their screen, users see amps, volts, and power consumption, can turn devices on and off, and can change the physical characters of a circuit breaker with software. For example, a user can change a 100 amp circuit breaker to 90, 70, 60 or 15 amps with their smartphone or computer. This solution eliminates the need to purchase additional meters, controls, communications and software for each since Atom Power embeds all of these features in their circuit breakers.

Originally developed and marketed for power distribution and management in commercial and industrial facilities, Atom Power announced expansion into the residential and electric vehicle charging markets in July 2021. Atom Power’s technology has been recognized by and invested in by well-known technology and startup funders, including  Next47, ABB, Eaton Corporation, Rockwell and Valor Equity Partners.