Thomas McAndrew founded Enchanted Rock in 2006, focusing on distributed energy resources that increase reliability, decrease cost, and decrease carbon footprint for commercial, industrial and institutional customers. In 2009, Enchanted Rock pioneered the launch of electrical reliability as a service and since then, has commissioned over 530 MW of distributed generation at over 250 sites, starting initially with emergency diesel and transitioning over to the cleanest resiliency microgrid in the market.
McAndrew brings over 36 years of experience in the electricity business, ranging from large, complex nuclear plants to small, distributed electric generation.
McAndrew’s introduction to energy was in engineering and operations on two US Navy nuclear power surface ships, the USS Eisenhower and USS South Carolina. He spent six years operating and maintaining nuclear propulsion plants and qualified as a Naval Nuclear Chief Engineer for the Nimitz Class aircraft carrier. After his time in the US Navy, McAndrew worked as a maintenance support engineer for the Southern Company at their Plant Farley nuclear business, where the cost of loss of electricity to critical loads is extremely high. He then shifted to the financial side of energy, helping several energy merchants build profitable energy trading and risk management operations. At his last merchant energy company, Calpine, McAndrew also supervised the commercial startup of many new natural gas combined cycle power plants
McAndrew received a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Texas A&M, Masters Equivalent in Nuclear Power Operations from the US Navy, and a Master’s in Business Administration from Harvard Business School.