Alison Mason

Alison is a Mechanical Engineer dedicated to solar energy as a solution to global warming and unreliable utility power. She has worked in microgrid design, energy storage, photovoltaics, concentrating solar power, passive solar, and solar thermal as researcher, advocate, educator, designer, and installer.

Alison is the Energy Program Official for the Puerto Rican Community Foundation where she manages the Community Energy Resilience Initiative (CERI) – an innovative program using philanthropic credit enhancement to incentivize critical service facilities to seek loan finance for battery-based solar systems. Alison co-founded Barrio Electrico – an initiative to bring resilient, residential solar power to the vulnerable grid edge in Puerto Rico – and taught solar energy design and installation on behalf of Bosque Modelo of Puerto Rico for women in the central mountains. She previously served as a Research Associate for Project Drawdown where she wrote the literature review for Grid Flexibility.

Alison earned her Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering at Colorado State University, with a focus on solar thermal engineering, and learned to design and install solar power systems at Solar Energy International in Carbondale, Colorado. She is a Fellow of the American Solar Energy Society and received the first Women in Solar Energy award in 2004.

She likes to be in the mountains, if possible with her husband and two grownup daughters - biking, hiking, nordic skiing, and snowboarding.