CES Stories | Employee Spotlight
Guy Filomena came into the world during one of the most powerful nor’easters ever to hit the Mid-Atlantic. It was March 1962 — the Ash Wednesday Storm — a three-day tempest that swallowed beaches, flooded coastlines, and reshaped the shoreline from Virginia to New Jersey. Somewhere on Chincoteague Island, a foal named Stormy was being born at the same moment, later immortalized in Marguerite Henry’s beloved children’s book Stormy, Misty’s Foal. Guy didn’t visit Chincoteague until last September. “I figured it was about time,” he says, laughing.
He’s always been a little like that — arriving exactly when the moment calls for it, shaped by forces larger than himself, and thoroughly unbothered about the timeline.
On April 1st, Guy retires from Customized Energy Solutions after 17½ years as Director of PJM Market Intelligence. He is, by his own cheerful admission, the last of the Filomena clan still on the clock. His siblings — government workers, union members — retired in their late 50s and early 60s. “They’ve been bothering me to retire for years,” he says. He finally decided the time was right about a year ago andinformed everyone he’d be stepping away.
Following the Current
Guy didn’t set out to become an electricity market expert. He started as a CPA at Ernst & Young, where one of his audit clients was Crown Petroleum — an oil company with refineries in Texas and gas stations up and down the East Coast. The work pulled him into commodity trading, and he found he loved it. When Baltimore Gas & Electric came calling through a professional auditors’ network, he followed the current.
At BG&E, he landed on what they called the “bulk power arrangements desk” — essentially a 24-hour electricity trading desk, five people working 12-hour shifts, right at the moment the U.S. electricity market was beginning to take shape. “Everything moved so quickly after that,” he says. Within a year, he was promoted off the desk to handle longer-term transactions. When Goldman Sachs and BG&E formed Constellation Energy in the late 1990s, Guy was one of the first people to make the move.
By the time he crossed paths with Bill Schofield at a MISO stakeholder meeting — Bill was there representing a small, newly formed company called Customized Energy Solutions — Guy had spent 12 years watching the electricity market grow from a regulated power pool into a competitive marketplace. He understood it from the inside out. “I had an advantage,” he says. “I got to see the nuts and bolts before it became a market. I got to see every unit in PJM on a screen because it wasn’t competitive yet.”
That foundation is rare. And CES recognized it.
Building Something
When Guy joined CES in 2008, the company had 45 people. The PJM team was him and one colleague. Today CES has grown to nearly 400, and the PJM team serves over 60 clients. Guy built that — not by chasing growth, but by doing the work well enough that growth followed.
His team monitors PJM stakeholder meetings — sometimes 5 to 10 a week — and translates what happens in those rooms into clear, actionable intelligence for clients navigating one of the most complex wholesale electricity markets in the world. “We keep them informed of important changes and the impact on their organizational interests,” he says simply.
What we charge is a fraction of what it would cost clients to have their own person at every PJM meeting — and they get the benefit of a team that’s been in that room for years. One compliance misstep at PJM can cost a client far more than a year of Market IQ. What we provide isn’t just information — it’s protection, and peace of mind.
What he’ll miss most isn’t the meetings. It’s the people — his team’s willingness to pitch in without being asked, and the clients who genuinely appreciate what they receive. “There’s no better feeling than a client that’s truly thankful,” he says.
What Comes Next
Guy’s retirement plan starts with a house to prep for sale in Howard County, Maryland — the house where his kids grew up, where he and his wife walk the trails along the Middle Patuxent River every evening at 5 PM. Those walks, he says, are as much about connection as exercise. “It’s a good time for her to download her day,” he says warmly. “I’m fine with that.”
Eventually, they’ll move full-time to Deep Creek Lake — a place they’ve had for over 30 years, where the kids grew up on the water, and where Guy is most himself. After that, when the mountain winters lose their appeal, they’ll follow his family south toward the Carolina coast. Somewhere flat, warm, and within a half hour of the ocean.
He’s not worried about what comes next. Guy Filomena has always had a knack for arriving at the right moment.
