Grid Innovation Engineer, Expert

Requisition ID # 161609 

Job Category: Engineering / Science 

Job Level: Individual Contributor

Business Unit: Electric Engineering

Work Type: Onsite

Job Location: Oakland

Department Overview

The Electric Planning Policy and Modernization (EPPM) team works collaboratively with diverse stakeholders both within and external to PG&E to streamline and enhance transparency into PG&E’s distribution planning process. EPPM develops new visualization tools, planning tools, and refine processes to inform grid capacity constraints and prepare for building and transportation electrification. The team works in a matrixed environment to identify barriers in delivering electric capacity to our customers and implements solutions to address them. The team also advocates for strategies and policies to integrate DERs effectively and reliably through regulatory proceedings, such as Modernize the Electric Grid for a High Distributed Energy Resources (DER) Future.

The Interconnection Modernization and Analysis (IMA) is part of EPPM organization. The IMA team’s mission is to help our customers and support decision making in a faster and leaner way. We do his by innovation to modernization of the interconnection process, using data and visualization tools, to meet our customer needs.

The IMA team designs and develops state of the art software and tools for distribution planning to integrate load management and DERs in the planning process, automate internal business processes, build visualization tools and maps, and compute highly granular distribution grid capacity data.

Position Summary

The hosting capacity data is becoming strategically important as it is used by internal and external PG&E customers to make critical business decisions. The information is used by PG&E customers before they submit a new service application or a new generation interconnection application. IMA team is also designing an IT product based on the hosting capacity data to automate the internal processes, that enhance customer’s experience and communications through their new energization requests.

The IMA team is looking for an Expert Grid Innovation Engineer to support the development of new distribution planning tools based on advanced automated analytics of PG&E’s distribution grid. The expert engineer will be responsible to build, maintain, and stabilize the process/tool to generate hosting capacity data for the entire PG&E distribution network. The data is dynamically changing as grid conditions change due to network reconfiguration and load transfers, device setting changes, new load forecasts, new load applications, new generation applications, new upgrades, etc; therefore, the data needs to be monitored for data quality purposes.

The job responsibilities includes but not limited to reviewing and correcting the auto-assembled power-flow models, monitoring the hosting capacity platform for potential technical issues, developing short-term and long-term plans to enhance the capabilities of the platform, developing data quality metrics, assessing the quality of the input and output data, working with subject matter experts to correct data outliers, working with subject matter experts to regularly publish the fresh data on Grid Resource Integration Portal (GRIP), draft reports on the issues, remediation plans, progress, and metrics, and discuss the results at public workshops. The Grid Innovation Engineer will inform Company strategic positions, influence policy, and propose process improvements that enable the integration of new load customers and DERs into PG&E’s grid of the future.

The candidate will work closely with subject matter experts to build new use cases for acceleration of the transportation and building electrification. The candidate will also inform PG&E’s policies and represent the company as it prepares the grid for a highly electrified future. The successful candidate will have the communication skills to coordinate and engage with internal and external counterparts and the innovative capabilities to drive the future development of distribution planning tools.

The successful candidate will help IMA drive numerous initiatives including but not limited to:

• Help to improve distribution grid modeling and simulations methodologies/tools to enhance grid planning for a highly electrified future.
• Help develop automated tools to efficiently perform distribution planning process, considering a highly electrified and DER penetrated of the future.
• Manage vendors on the provision of distribution planning tools to enable more advanced analysis
• Help answering key business questions by querying data from large databases, running statistical data analysis, and data validation.

PG&E is providing the salary range that the company in good faith believes it might pay for this position at the time of the job posting. This compensation range is specific to the locality of the job.  The actual salary paid to an individual will be based on multiple factors, including, but not limited to, specific skills, education, licenses or certifications, experience, market value, geographic location, and internal equity.  Although we estimate the successful candidate hired into this role will be placed towards the middle or entry point of the range, the decision will be made on a case-by-case basis related to these factors.

A reasonable salary range is:

Minimum Base Salary (Bay Area)           $ 140,000.00

Maximum Base Salary (Bay Area)          $ 238,000.00

Job Responsibilities

• Collaborate with other utilities, manufacturers, engineering, IT, and standards departments on advancing new distributed energy resources applications, such as smart inverters, and reducing interconnection costs.
• Understand the various data streams that are needed to model grid impacts
• Meet with stakeholders to better understand their issues and inform them of the potential grid impacts.
• Explore, innovate, and demonstrate technologies that facilitate easier load/generation interconnection and modernization.
• Assess potential distributed energy resources risks at higher penetration levels and communicate to upper management.
• Represent PG&E as its technical expert integrating distributed resources and technologies onto the electric grid in regulatory proceedings and industry working groups.
• Responsible for identifying, developing and implementing new standards and guidelines, in collaboration with Distribution Standards Department, to facilitate distributed energy resources integration while minimizing potential grid impacts.

Qualifications

Minimum:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering or equivalent experience
• Experience with grid modeling software (e.g. CYMDIST, PSLF, Aspen, etc.)
• 7 years of electric utility related experience

Desired:

• Master’s of Science or PhD in electrical engineering, particularly power system engineering, is a plus
• Experience with power system modelling and simulations
• Experience with distribution planning or operations modeling software (e.g., CYME, LoadSEER, SYNERGI)
• Familiarity with python and SQL scripting
• Expertise in Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word
• Strong problem solving and analytical skills
• Public speaking and stakeholder engagement experience
• Strong communication skills, both oral and written
• Familiarity with large databases and data analytics is a plus
• Licensed Professional Electrical Engineer in the State of California

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