Experience & Expertise
Mark Treat - Owner, COCOSOLAR
The majority of Mark’s professional career was spent building fossil power plants and managing complex capital projects in MO, AR, and OK with the last four years spent in Resource Planning.
All business is conducted between people. When dealing with a young company, the experience and relationships of the owner is the largest driver whether to conduct business with said company. For the small business owner in particular, reputation is everything. Please reach out to people in the industry with whom you are familiar who know me. I am happy to provide references for utilities who are bidding small solar farm projects.
Mark began his power career in 1999 as an unlicensed nuclear power plant operator for Entergy’s AR Nuclear 1. Operations instilled in him an understanding that for optimal success utilities must focus on Operations and Maintenance beginning at the Engineering, Procurement, and Construction stages to maximize success.
The largest fossil power plant build Mark was the owner’s project manager for was the Chouteau 2 combined cycle gas plant in Oklahoma. It was budgeted for $490M and came in $75M under budget.
Just as important, Chouteau 2 also went commercial 8 days early with an immediately high availability rate. The major equipment for this plant had been in storage for a decade due to original site never obtaining its water use permit. Many things went right on this project. They did not go right by chance, but because we had really good people in the right places that were given appropriate authority to perform their job.
Prior to that Mark assisted in the build of the Dell combined cycle plant in Arkansas. Mark took part in many other complex capital projects while working at Associated Electric Cooperative, Inc (AECI) and is forever grateful to the management and member owners of AECI for placing their trust in him for the work performed and allowing him to raise his children in the Springfield, MO community.
Mark has worked with more than 10 engineering firms and many contractors on projects through the years. These relationships as well as newer ones with Solar OEM providers allows cost competitive high quality community scale solar farms for small utilities.
Please reference Mark’s Curriculum Vitae for more details on my project experience and specific solar training.