We spoke to our Senior Interconnection Manager, Melissa Reed, to learn how the trajectory of her career led her to ForeFront Power and the relationships she’s built over the years as the conduit between different project teams and utilities.

We Are ForeFront Melissa Reed

Where are you from originally?

MR: I’m from a small town in north central Massachusetts called Westminster, home of Wachusett Mountain and Westminster Cracker Factory. The little soup crackers that you get with clam chowder, those are Westminster crackers. It’s a very small two-horse town. They even have to combine two towns to form a high school.

What do you like to do in your free time?

MR: I like to garden, hike, camp, take my very active dog for walks, and attend concerts. I mostly like to go out and listen to music of all genres. I’ve always liked a wide variety of music. If it’s playing and sounds like music, I’m into it.

What did you want to be when you grew up? 

MR: Originally, I wanted to be a journalist. I thought I could be a reporter on TV or radio, so I practiced and focused on my writing skills growing up. But when I entered my first year of college, everything changed. I decided to switch to business, majoring in Marketing with a minor in Graphic Arts.

Can you tell us a bit more about your career path?

MR: I was lucky to travel a lot throughout college. I went to St. Michael’s College in Winooski, Vermont, then Franklin Pierce College in Rindge, New Hampshire, and eventually ended up at UNLV in Vegas. When I was a full-time student, I worked at a five-star restaurant, where I put my marketing and graphic arts courses to use, helping open a new location and design the restaurant menu.

Fast forward a few years, I moved to California and worked for a manufacturer of products for customers like Disney and McDonald’s. These products were tchotchkes, so I worked on the design implementation for large events and give aways.

I was in the advertising business for 10 years before I got a job as the executive assistant to the VP of sales at SPG Solar in the Bay Area. After many years in advertising, boom, I’m in the solar world! After many years of producing promotional landfill, it felt good to be part of the renewable shift in California. It was like my karma had been repaired.

How did you end up joining ForeFront Power? 

MR: SPG Solar was bought by SunEdison. During this transition, I started working in Interconnection. When Mitsui purchased a portion of the company, I was part of the original group who formed ForeFront Power. It’s been a wild ride!

How has your role evolved since then?

MR: I was the sole person in Interconnection until 2021, a year before Time of Use rates changed for solar customers and two years prior to the California NEM 2.0 sunset. It was my responsibility to submit designs to the utility and manage applications until it receives permission to operate. I was in such constant communication with the engineering team that it felt like an engineering role at times. To me, the combination of engineering and development is what makes interconnection interesting.

Hundreds of projects later, I am now the Manager of a small crew. September 2024 marked my 11th year anniversary working in solar and as part of the ForeFront Power team

What are your responsibilities like now?

MR: I oversee more intricate Battery Storage and greater than One Megawatt Photovoltaic projects where you need to know the utility rules and tariffs like the back of your hand. I specialize in behind-the-meter interconnection applications nationally, actively working with over 15 utility companies from initial application to Permission to Operate (PTO). I’ve found the key to maneuvering through utility bureaucracy is just being respectful and courteous. This helps me connect our team with a receptive person who will work quickly and get the job done. I think that the major thing with interconnection – it’s the conduit, the glue between the two entities.

Understanding the utility and its many intricacies are what I cherish most. Some of my contacts at PG&E have been there since I was working for SPG. I’ve held those relationships that I’ve taken years to build close to the vest. Back in the day, utilities only wanted one conduit per company and it’s still very much like that today. My role has become more of a senior position – someone who deals with the larger projects and gets further up the food chain with the supervisors, escalating wherever need be.

What do you enjoy most about the job? 

MR: I enjoy the quick turnaround. It’s exciting to be able to start and close a project. I like working with large companies, making our designs work with utility requirements, and building a really great relationship with the utility, one that our customers benefit from. I view these relationships as our number one priority.

I also like the collaboration of turning a new project into an actual installation in the future. To best work with external EPC partners and contractors, our design, engineering, and interconnection teams are in close coordination. We need each other. I get the communication from the utility, relay it to them, we all break down what details may change in order to meet the utility’s requirements. That’s done several times throughout a project life cycle.

Do you have a favorite project that you worked on?

MR: I love them all. They’re all so different. Cabrillo College was a great project that was pretty seamless. Any of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation projects are favorites, even though they are transmission, higher voltage projects, which were difficult because they required more involvement from the utility. That’s why our customers keep coming to us, because of our relationships and our due diligence. We go above and beyond.

What excites you most about the future of renewable energy?

MR: More energy management! My team and I are keeping up with battery storage and EV Charging and the latest technologies to offset customers’ energy demands from the grid. Everything is exciting in this scope of work because it’s all new. Even when we’ve done it before, there’s always something new to learn. Utilities in the national sphere are still learning too. Many are learning through California’s requirements and completed projects.

Do you have any advice for people who might want to enter the renewable energy field?

MR: Do what you can to fully understand energy capacity – what’s allocated, queued, and behind a circuit. Going to school gives you a leg up because engineers can work directly with the utility to propagate solar and batteries. As long as you move fast and learn constantly, you will love working in renewable energy.