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Melissa Chan

Director of Grid Services and Strategic Partnerships
Fermata Energy
Charlottesville, Virginia, United States

An expert in grid edge technologies and utility solutions, Dr. Melissa Chan (Director of Grid Solutions & Strategic Partnerships) leads and scales Fermata Energy vehicle-to-everything (V2X) solutions to maximize benefits to end users and the grid. At Fermata Energy, the leader in V2X bidirectional charging solutions, Dr. Chan leads Fermata Energy’s collaboration with utilities and transmission market operators to interconnect and integrate V2X assets into the grid.
With equitable access a key issue for stakeholders throughout the EV industry, Dr. Chan is leading the development of business models that leverage V2X revenues to make EVs accessible for households in low-to-moderate income and disadvantaged communities.
Dr. Chan has over 20 years of experience advising, planning, deploying, and evaluating energy infrastructure deployment from carbon capture for coal plants to microgrids. A two-time entrepreneur and industry consultant before joining Fermata Energy, Dr. Chan has launched new grid edge technologies that deliver benefits to utilities and their customers. Her work has focused on the design and evaluation of innovative electricity rates and incentive programs to ensure benefits to all electricity ratepayers, and in particular low-to-moderate income customers; designing and evaluating the deployment of smart grid assets to increase distribution and transmission network reliability and resilience in urban and rural areas; development of a solution to provide access-for-all to low-carbon and low-cost power purchase agreements that are typically only available to corporations; and in her independent consulting emphasized that her clients create and implement diversity procurement practices, develop job training programs, and design their projects to deliver benefits to historically disadvantaged neighborhoods. She holds a Ph.D in Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon.

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