Joseph “Joe” Cunningham is a co-founder and director of operations of Tempe-headquartered Sunny Energy, one of Arizona’s largest providers of residential and commercial solar energy systems.Joe is also a founding member and president of the Distributed Energy Resources Alliance (DERA), a non-profit trade organization dedicated to the development of distributed energy resources, including solar, battery storage, active demand management, distributed grid services and smart grid solutions for a reliable and sustainable energy supply. He has recently earned the solar industry’s leading recognition of installation expertise from the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners (NABCEP®), and is now a NABCEP Certified PV Installation Professional.An industry leader, Joe is active in photovoltaic (PV) standards development with The SunSpec Alliance as chairman of the Orange Button Construction working group. He has co-authored two white papers, through SunSpec, on PV System Performance Metrics and PV System Commissioning for Performance Guidelines. He is recipient of the SunSpec Open Standards Champion award for years of voluntary standards work.