Matthew Shapiro is the principal of Gridflex Services, LLC. He began working in renewable energy in 1990 by scouting new wind energy development sites in the Pacific Northwest. He then joined R. Lynette & Associates, at the time the leading wind energy consulting firm in the world, supporting a wide variety of projects. For much of the 1990’s, he was a consultant to Zond Systems (later Enron Wind), for whom he focused on innovative solutions to transmission bottlenecks and for marketing renewable energy.
Long before the maturing of the renewable energy market that we see today, Matthew pioneered the potential for large-scale conservation transfer sales between utility markets, the unbundling of wind energy electrons from renewable energy credits (a forerunner of what would become known as RECs), the direct coupling of wind energy with large scale energy storage, and early exploration of the potential for offshore wind in the U.S.
In the 2000’s, Matthew’s focus shifted toward large scale energy storage, particularly pumped storage hydropower. He co-founded Gridflex Energy, LLC in 2009 to originate development on the best new pumped storage prospects in the United States. Outside consulting in this arena has included the development of strategies for enabling island markets to shift to very high renewable energy penetrations with the aid of pumped storage and other technologies. Matthew has also consulted on a number of independent transmission projects.
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