With over 65 years of combined experience, CSD Energy Advisors can help you navigate the ever evolving and complex energy environments.
Our COMPANY
CSD Energy Advisors is an energy management firm based in Houston, TX. We use our market knowledge to help clients reduce costs and improve their energy management strategy. From energy procurement to demand response and energy storage, we create custom solutions for any business's energy needs.
Our TEAM
Andrew BaRTH
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Andrew Barth is Partner and Co-Founder of CSD Energy Advisors, LLC, a national energy management firm that assists clients with the development and implementation of integrated energy solutions. Based in Houston, TX, Mr. Barth combines fifteen years of industry experience, customer service, and technology to provide client based solutions. His areas of expertise are in the planning and sourcing of commodity procurement strategies, risk management, and the development of efficiency and sustainability initiatives.
Mr. Barth is also serving in his second year as President of the National Board of The Energy Professionals Association (TEPA). With chapters in Texas and the Northeast, TEPA was founded to promote a standardized code of conduct among members, educate the community on energy initiatives and advocate legislative plans in deregulated energy markets. The organization is composed of Aggregators, Brokers, Consultants (A/B/C’s), Retail Energy Providers (REP’s) and affiliate members. TEPA specializes in providing market knowledge to help consumers make the best energy procurement choices and to uphold the integrity of deregulated retail energy markets across the country.
Mr. Barth was previously Executive Vice President at Incite Energy, a Texas based consulting firm that specializes in procurement, integrated technologies, renewable solutions, and demand response. Additionally, he served as Vice President of Business Development for World Energy Solutions, a publicly traded company that assists clients in executing strategies to control and reduce energy costs through the application of consulting and brokerage services. He has also held Regional and National Sales Director positions in both Dallas and Houston, TX for World Energy Solutions and GSE Consulting, LP (formerly Gulf States Energy) where he recruited, developed, and managed sales teams across the country.
Mr. Barth is a graduate of the University of Missouri – Columbia.
JB SOWYRDA
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JB Sowyrda is Partner and Co-Founder of CSD Energy Advisors with over thirteen years of energy experience on both the Supplier and Consulting sides of the industry. He co-founded CSD Energy Advisors as an energy consulting and management firm to use market knowledge as well as leverage buying power to implement procurement strategies that merge price, product and renewable solutions while maintaining the utmost integrity on behalf of CSD’s customers.
Mr. Sowyrda was previously Executive Vice President of Operations at Incite Energy, a Texas based consulting firm that specializes in procurement, integrated technologies, renewable solutions, and demand response. At Incite, Mr. Sowyrda was responsible for the day-to-day operations, while also sourcing and maintaining suppliers and vendor relationships, conceptualizing renewable product solutions, contract negotiations, and structuring products and services for many of the largest Commercial and Industrial customers in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
Prior to Incite, Mr. Sowyrda spent eight years at Reliant Energy, an NRG Company, where he served as Account Executive responsible for developing and managing broker relationships by generating revenue through sales in ERCOT and PJM. In this role, Mr. Sowyrda worked jointly with Legal, Risk, Supply, Commercial Operations and Billing teams to facilitate sales. Mr. Sowyrda also held roles within Reliant’s Risk Group where he was responsible for structuring financial products, supporting commercial activity for both the wholesale and retail businesses, product development as well as developing costing and pricing strategies in ERCOT and PJM.
Mr. Sowyrda holds a BS in Business Administration with a duel concentration in Finance and Marketing from Trinity University.
JD Schmidt
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JD Schmidt is Partner of CSD Energy Advisors, LLC, a national energy consulting firm founded in 2014 and based in Houston, Texas. CSD assists clients with consulting in the development and implementation of integrated energy solutions. With more than fifteen years of industry experience at one of largest wholesale and retail power generation companies, Mr. Schmidt held numerous positions focused on Commercial and Industrial clients across the United States. In addition to structuring complex and wholesale-like retail products for energy intensive clients, his expertise includes asset development for utility and distributed thermal and renewable generation resources.
Most recently with NRG, Mr. Schmidt led the large commercial and industrial sales teams for Reliant’s ERCOT and PJM retail businesses. His efforts spanned multiple service levels and thirteen states that included serving clients with retail electricity, demand response, renewable integration, and project development. Mr. Schmidt ensured a long-term focus on customer needs and building relationships resulting in exemplary marks for high customer service and satisfaction. Mr. Schmidt also implemented multiple market communication programs across all platforms of NRG’s retail business for the benefit of NRG’s customer base.
Prior to the dedicated focus on retail electricity, Mr. Schmidt was instrumental in building the non-commodity business development unit within NRG. At the time, his new team was viewed in the industry as “first of its kind”, and Mr. Schmidt pioneered many of the new products and services providing large scale adoption of renewables and distributed generation services that are now available to customers today. Along with being responsible for strategy development, coordination, and implementation of processes across multiple business units, the team worked closely on traditional power generation assets including Combined Heat and Power (CHP) and large utility scale installations for commercial and industrial customers. The primary focus was developing onsite or offsite solar and wind projects based on financial modeling, desired flexibility, and customer goals. Mr. Schmidt is credited with numerous successes for some of the largest distributed generation onsite solar projects for Fortune 500 clients across the United States.
Mr. Schmidt earned his BBA in Marketing from Texas Tech University.
Jason Gunderson
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Jason Gunderson is an energy professional with over 14 years of experience in various energy related fields including sales leadership, risk management, wholesale supply and demand response. Based in Houston, TX, Mr. Gunderson serves as President of Links EP, LLC, a Texas based demand response and consulting firm that offers a fully integrated technology platform. As President and founder of Links EP demand response, a qualified scheduling entity (QSE), Links became the 3rd registered ERCOT ERS participant in Texas where he has aided in the shaping and development of the ERS market we know today. He utilizes his portfolio and risk management experience, along with skills in contract structuring and negotiation to drive enhanced results for his clientele.
Mr. Gunderson was previously at Incite Energy, a Texas based consulting firm that specializes in procurement, integrated technologies, renewable solutions, and demand response. At Incite, he aided in the founding of the business, implemented processes, managed wholesale structured products inclusive of HR and fixed block strategies, as well as basis management for electricity and natural gas end users. He has also assisted in contracting FTR and CRR clients throughout the PJM and ERCOT markets. Mr. Gunderson served as Executive Vice President for 6 years.
Prior to Incite, Mr. Gunderson served in multiple wholesale, risk management and structuring roles, including Director of Risk Management at Champion Energy Services. In this role, he managed a $500MM wholesale portfolio of industrial, commercial and residential customers across the country. He was instrumental in growing Champion Energy Services portfolio outside of Texas by a multiple of 25x by developing competitive pricing models, trading options, designing multiple hedging strategies, analyzing markets to identify volatility trends and recognizing weather anomalies for market advantages. Additionally, Mr. Gunderson served as Director of Supply and Pricing at Potentia Energy where he established and managed the risk desk in the ERCOT market. He started his career on a leadership rotational team holding multiple positions within the Reliant Energy pricing and structuring desk.
Mr. Gunderson holds a Bachelor of Science from Texas A&M University and an MBA from Houston Baptist University with a concentration in finance.