Welcome Your New Expert Interview Series: Ryan Quint, New Expert in the Clean Power Group – [an Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Expert Interview]

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Matt Chester: Welcome to the Network of Experts. Let’s start by sharing with our audience your credentials: what is your role in the energy sector and what are your areas of expertise?

Ryan Quint: I recently founded Elevate Energy Consulting with the vision of helping the electricity sector tackle tomorrow’s problems today. At Elevate, we are focused on enabling the clean energy transition in a reliable, secure, and affordable manner.

I consider my role in the industry as a change agent, a collaborator, an arbiter, and a trusted partner to do good. I started my career as a transmission planning engineer focused on stability; now my expertise is bringing people together to tackle complex problems and create innovative solutions.

Elevate’s core areas of expertise revolve around renewables integration, inverter-based resource modeling and studies, regulatory (NERC/FERC) compliance, education and training, executive management consulting, industry collaboration and advocacy, and R&D.

MC: Your experience spans from working with large utilities like Dominion Energy to leading industry-wide initiatives at NERC. How do you perceive the role of collaboration and information-sharing across different stakeholders in ensuring grid resilience and reliability?

RQ: Collaboration is the only way to unlock change. And the faster you can generate effective collaboration and buy-in from stakeholders, the quicker you can develop solutions. Bringing opposite perspectives together leads to a better outcome. Technical argument is healthy – particularly when you seek to understand the other side deeply. It changes your perspective and brings people together. There really is no other way. It took me years to fully come to this realization; once I did, I’ve been able to be a more effective leader and better human.

MC: Given the increasing penetration of renewable energy resources and distributed generation, what do you believe are the most significant opportunities and challenges for utilities in adapting to this changing landscape? How can utilities effectively manage this transition while maintaining grid reliability and resilience?

RQ: The grid of the future will truly look nothing like the grid of the past. We are integrating renewables at such a rapid pace; bringing on batteries and hybrid plants were not even considered a decade ago. We have an insane load growth projection over the coming decades, and it will only accelerate with the technological advancements happening around us.

It is always uplifting to remember that every facet of modern society relies on reliable and resilient electricity – including every other critical infrastructure. Electricity has been, and will continue to be, the backbone of the modern economy. Utilities are faced with incredible challenges handling this pace of change; however, there are also endless opportunities to bring new technologies on the grid, build large capital projects that have never been done before, redesign the entire system, develop new controls that leverage grid-edge devices like EVs and distributed generation. Whatever your skillset, it’s an incredibly exciting time to be in the power industry.

MC: As the founder and CEO of Elevate Energy Consulting, you’re focused on building a world-class team to tackle challenges in the electricity sector during this energy transition. What qualities do you believe are essential for individuals working in this field, particularly in navigating the complexities of renewable energy integration and grid modernization?

RQ: When I’m building a team, I’m focused on character over skills. The qualities our industry needs right now are integrity, respect, trustworthiness, innovation, initiative. Skills are teachable, these attributes at best can be honed. Someone that can think outside the box, ask big questions, bring people together, share openly, help wherever needed, and challenge the status quo respectfully. These are the qualities I look for in who I surround myself with.

As an industry, we are in an unbelievable shortage of expertise and experience. The “old guard” is retiring and the “new guard” is having to step up into leadership roles rapidly. But the expansion of our industry has left gaping holes at the utilities. And we all need to be proactive in helping utilities across the U.S. and around the world build world-class teams of their own.

MC: What drew you to get involved in the Energy Central community, and what value do you hope to bring your peers on the platform?

RQ: Energy Central has been a fantastic conduit of information and knowledge, where a community comes together to ask questions, sharing information, and interact with peers in a meaningful and supportive way. It has been helpful to go find information about latest trends and news around the industry across a wide array of topics and focus areas. 

So I want to say thank you for the opportunity to be part of the Energy Central community as an Expert. I look forward to connecting with folks facing meaningful challenges; we are here to serve and provide value during this energy transition.

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Thanks to Ryan for joining me for this interview and for providing a wealth of insights and expertise to the Energy Central Community. You can trust that Ryan will be available for you to reach out and connect, ask questions, and more as an Energy Central member, so be sure to make him feel welcome when you see her across the platform.

The other expert interviews that we’ve completed in this series can be read here, and if you are interested in becoming an expert, you can reach out to me or you can apply here.