Main Responsibilities of a Director of Development at GridStor
Matthew, Director of Development at GridStor, manages a portfolio of battery energy storage projects, acting as "a project manager" through all development phases—from initial concept to construction-ready status. This involves diverse tasks including real estate acquisition, due diligence, interconnection studies, permitting, community engagement, and meticulous financial management of multi-million dollar, multi-year budgets.
Project Management, Financial Analysis, Real Estate, Permitting and Regulatory Compliance, Community Engagement
Advizer Information
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Matthew Gilliland
Director of Development
GridStor
UC Santa Barbara
UCLA Anderson MBA
Environmental & Related Sciences
Energy & Utilities
Operations and Project Management
None Applicable
Video Highlights
1. Manages a portfolio of battery energy storage projects in various development stages.
2. Handles all day-to-day development activities, including real estate acquisition, due diligence, interconnection studies, permitting, and community engagement.
3. Oversees project budgets (millions of dollars) and schedules (spanning several years), requiring financial analysis and project management skills.
Transcript
What are your main responsibilities within your current role as a Development Director?
I am responsible for all of the day-to-day development activities of a number of our project development assets. I'm really a project manager and I manage a portfolio of battery energy storage projects that are in various stages of development.
They are somewhere between an original idea and being constructed. This means we are getting real estate and negotiating real estate agreements, doing due diligence on land we want to develop, and managing the interconnection study process for these projects through the utilities.
We are also seeking permits and engaging with the community to get support for these projects so that we can get our permits. On top of that, I manage the project budget and schedule. These schedules can last several years and the budgets can be many millions of dollars.
There is a lot of administrative and project management as well as financial analysis to support continued development of the project at each stage. Broadly speaking, that is what the role of a developer is: to manage all of those and advance a project from idea to shovel-ready asset that can be built.