CES Stories | Employee Spotlight | Matt Lollini, Director of Product Development, FutureGrid
Ask Matt Lollini what he does, and he won’t start with his title. “I really view myself as a translator,” he says.
On one side are the analysts and customers who live and breathe ISO market rules. On the other are the developers who turn ideas into software. Matt’s job is to make sure nothing gets lost in between.
“How you talk to the business or to customers is very different than how you talk to developers,” he explains. “They don’t necessarily need to know the complex market features, but can you distill it into something they understand, so they know what they actually need to build?”
Think of the team-building exercise where only one person sees the LEGO instructions and has to talk everyone else through the build. “Honestly,” Matt says, “that’s basically what I do.”
An Engineer Who Didn’t Know He Was in Energy
Matt never set out to work in energy. A mechanical engineer by training, he started as a junior implementation engineer on PowerGREEN, a product that helps commercial and industrial facilities keep electricity costs in check. He soon moved into support management, and that’s where the translating began: every customer issue had to be understood, then explained to the developers who could fix it.
“PowerGREEN always touched on energy, but it was mostly around saving customers money on their electric bill,” he says. “That was the extent of my energy knowledge.”
That changed about ten years ago, when CES acquired the PowerGREEN product line and Matt came with it. “I really didn’t know I was entering the energy industry until I joined CES and started learning what ISO markets and LMPs were.”
Learning a New Language, Fast
Around 2018, CES decided to build GridBOOST from the ground up, and Matt was handed a blank page. Suddenly the behind-the-meter specialist needed fluency in ancillary services, day-ahead and real-time markets, and price forecasting.
He didn’t learn it alone. “We have some of the smartest energy folks in the industry,” he says. “I can go have a CES expert explain ISO New England, California, or Texas anytime I need it. If I didn’t have that, I would not be successful in my role.”
Today Matt sets the roadmap for GridBOOST and PowerGREEN, and the learning hasn’t stopped. As GridBOOST expands into PJM, he’s diving headfirst into a new market’s mechanics all over again.
Where Precision Matters
Some of Matt’s proudest work is the kind customers never see. GridBOOST builds the offers renewable and storage resources submit into energy markets, and those offers can get extraordinarily complex. Matt’s team recently built an engine that ensures that, whatever the optimizer recommends and whatever a customer configures, the result is always a valid, market-compliant offer.
The stakes are real. A bad offer can cost a client money, “or cause them to not produce energy, which would be worse.”
Solving the Next Puzzle
Some of Matt’s proudest work is the kind customers never see. GridBOOST builds the offers renewable and storage resources submit into energy markets, and those offers can get extraordinarily complex. Matt’s team recently built an engine that ensures that, whatever the optimizer recommends and whatever a customer configures, the result is always a valid, market-compliant offer.
The stakes are real. A bad offer can cost a client money, “or cause them to not produce energy, which would be worse.”
Off the Clock
Matt grew up in Salt Lake City, where skiing was practically part of the school week: every Friday in winter, he was on the mountain. Now on the East Coast, where he jokes that most people ski “down ice slopes,” he heads west for powder as often as he can.
When work follows him home, he cooks, a habit that started with Sunday dinners alongside his older brother in college. “When I’m cooking, things all have to come out on time,” he says. “It stops me from thinking about anything else.” His go-to dishes are a tortellini soup and a lemon garlic pasta that, by his account, nobody has ever complained about.
Why Energy, Why Now
For anyone considering a career in energy, Matt’s advice is simple: do it. “It’s like trading stocks, except it’s 24 hours a day and supply has to meet demand,” he says. “If it doesn’t, people lose power.”
With renewables getting cheaper, storage taking off, and data centers reshaping demand, he sees the grid at a turning point. “I’ve got a product line that’s really helping make renewable energy and storage stay viable, which keeps energy prices down for consumers,” he says. “That’s what excites me the most.”
It’s a lot of complexity to hold in one head. Luckily, Matt speaks both languages.
