ConnectDER Hires Chad Conway to Drive Product Innovation

PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 29, 2026 /CourierPR/ -- ConnectDER, a leading manufacturer of meter socket adapters (MSAs) for solar, home battery, and EV charging installations, has hired Chad Conway as Vice President of Product. Conway, a veteran of the clean energy industry, joins the company amid rapid installer adoption of its devices.

Conway brings 15 years of experience building hardware for the clean energy transition. He was a founding team member and Head of Products at SPAN, the smart electric panel maker, where he led the development of the SPAN Panel from an idea to installations in thousands of homes across the U.S. His focus throughout has been on reducing the total cost to the customer. At SPAN, that meant integrating the technology layer directly into the busbar so electricians could install the panel without extra field steps. His team's work also helped modernize the National Electrical Code, clearing a path to lower the cost of electrifying homes nationwide.

Before SPAN, Conway spent six years on Tesla's Energy team, helping take the Powerwall from concept to more than 50,000 annual deployments. In the aftermath of Hurricanes Irma and Maria, he led on-the-ground teams working with local communities to restore power and design more resilient energy systems, work that reiterated the importance of resilience as a design priority.

ConnectDER's devices have received major utility approvals across the U.S. for installation directly into the utility meter socket, including in California and Arizona, where MSAs are particularly beneficial due to the prevalence of meter-main combination panels on homes that would otherwise require a full day of circuitry work and reconfiguration. Where meter socket adapters are not yet approved by the local utility, ConnectDER's IslandDER™ device may be installed in an additional, separate meter socket without the need for utility approval.

Conway's hire comes as American homeowners face a worsening tradeoff between cost and reliability. A recent county-by-county analysis of the U.S. grid found that in nearly one in three counties, electricity prices rose over the past decade even as outages got worse, meaning millions of Americans are paying more for a grid that performs worse than it used to. That combination is accelerating demand for home battery storage and backup power, and putting pressure on installers to deploy it faster and more affordably.

ConnectDER's flagship product, IslandDER™, was launched in 2025 to unlock seamless whole-home backup. The device has become the standard Microgrid Interconnect Device (MID) option for installers, eliminating the need for circuit relocations and subpanels on whole-home backup jobs. It is compatible with systems from SolarEdge, FranklinWH, Lunar Energy, EcoFlow, and Fox ESS, with additional partnerships already under agreement.