May 2, 2020, marks the tenth anniversary of MGS. Recognizing this put me in a reflective mood and I asked myself, “Ten years ago, did I expect us to be where we are today? Did I even expect to survive this long?”

The short answer is that starting out, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but over time my expectations have been exceeded in so many positive ways.

From the beginning, MGS has had a simple philosophy. The utility world needs strong domain experts who can do a lot of the deeper thinking that a utility doesn’t always have the time or the people to do on their own. We do this constantly so that when a client asks us a question, we’ve been pondering it ourselves or have already come up with a potential solution – based on real-world knowledge and experience, not on hypotheticals. Ten years ago, we often said, “If you have a problem, someone from our team has solved it three times.” Today, what it really boils down to is that all of our consultants are seasoned experts, and all of our clients get our undivided attention.

Over the last ten years, the makeup of MGS has changed completely. We have grown from one individual contributor (me) to over 20 subject matter experts with a shared focus on solving our clients’ problems. Our team is comprised of people who have worked together previously at Accenture, ESCA, and others. Because of our long working relationship, we melded together as a team so easily because of the existing trust between us. And over the years we’ve become friends, not just colleagues. We share our life experiences and look to each other for advice and support.

Now our team is growing again! We’re adding new people to the team who may not yet have the deep expertise of us long-timers but all have the hunger to learn and the curiosity to ask interesting questions that get us all thinking differently – and that is a really good thing! I’m proud to report we’ve recently hired our first MGS intern!

The most significant impact on our growth over the last decade has been our amazing clients. From our first small project with GE, we’ve continued to help solve interesting challenges for over 60 clients representing some of our global industry’s biggest names. We couldn’t be prouder of our growing client list including utilities, vendors, solution providers, DOE labs and smart cities.

As we emerge from the life-changing experiences of a global pandemic, we are faced with the realization that many challenges that have taken a back seat to allow the broader utility world to focus on its basic service of keeping the lights on, are still here and they are even more important now than they were before.

Looking forward to the next ten years, I see us (MGS, our clients, and the greater industry) focusing on strategic issues like electrification and the re-imagination of how to configure the electric grid to accommodate new possibilities.  The physics remain the same but how power is generated, distributed and how customers’ demands change providing exciting challenges for our industry. Important in this is the point that while the physics remains constant, every part of the sector is facing some pretty cool and challenging changes. In addition, our focus will be on key topics such as DER dispatch, ADMS implementations, green hydrogen, microgrids, sustainable electrification or remote parts of Africa, expanding university education around the world, and others.

While the nuances of our philosophy have evolved and our team has grown over the last ten years, our fundamentals have stayed constant. We remain grounded in our strong work ethic and obsessive passion for mastering the details and connecting the dots to help make the modern grid possible for our clients and our communities.

And, finally, all of us at MGS are grateful for our families who have supported our ambitions over these last ten years. You’ve made it possible for us to be super busy when we needed to be and provided us with emotional support when we needed it too. We couldn’t have achieved a fraction of what we have without you! THANK YOU!