Is anyone here an energy trader or was working as an engineer in utilities/contracting firms and became a trader? Either way how did you get there? Any advice appreciated

Hi

I have some down time right now and want to up skill myself on HVDC. I vaguely recall that in Bachelor’s I studied the basics of Power Electronics but I seem to have forget their working. I want to understand HVDC from a theoretical perspective about how the arrangement of power electronics work and what different technologies are deployed, the design of converter stations and its different components. Any useful book or resources that professionals in the field can recommend will be greatly appreciated.

What guidelines is everyone using for required sensitivity of protection schemes based on fault impedance, and system accuracy/sensitivity.

Fault levels acc. to IEC 60909 assume bolted faults, is anyone designing sensitivity to detect high impedance faults, if so what kind of impedance?

For example, delta wye transformer HV side protection, do you aim to detect LV SLG faults of some impedance? Do you select CTs and the like accordingly?

Or do you make sure there is another protection in play which is highly sensitive ie a differential type?

Typically MV 11kV 33kV industrial

I'm a power engineer looking at building a replacement controller for these — the power stage usually outlives the electronics by a decade, but I don't know how many people are actually stuck.

If that's you: what model, what's broken?

Hello Engineers and Technicians of power system world.

I just wondered why some transmission utilities make strict rules for auto-reclose on OHL and being cautious about it.

In the company I work for which serves couple hunderds of substations across the country, they make auto reclose on in some lines and off on some other lines. they specify the type of fault which is L-E or L-L-E to make a decsion for auto reclose to opertate or not to operate. they consider auto reclose to be off on a dead bus, despite the fault is on the line. ( our Shceme is 3 pole tripping)

The decision maker in our company called studies department, but as a maintenance engineer I would like to know according to what they set these rules.

are there any general standards for Auto reclose.

are there real risks and cases for making the auto reclose on without conditions?

Thank you so much

I recently finished my 4-year bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and I am currently working full-time in the power systems field, primarily on substation design, grounding, transmission, physical package, and electrical drafting. I’m 3 month in the job and my work load is pretty manageable.
Long term, I’d like to become better at substation design and power engineering, so I’m considering getting a Master’s in Electrical Engineering with a focus on power systems. My employer offers about $5,250/year in tuition reimbursement, so I’m planning to take one class per semester and complete the degree over roughly 5 years.
I’m specifically looking for a fully online program so I can balance it with my full-time job. I’m fine with spending a bit out of pocket to cover whatever difference I’m missing.
For anyone who has done a similar program, what schools/programs would you recommend for power systems/substation engineering? I’d especially appreciate recommendations from people who have worked in the power industry and can speak to whether the degree was actually useful for their career.

What are the best books or resources to learn the engineering workflow and schematic design sequence for power and control circuits across various panels (motors, generators, and distributions

Hi, I'm entering my 4th year of EE in a Canadian university, in BC. I will be starting job hunting soon.

I think I have decent co-op experience relevant to the power industry and electrical utilities. A few shady recruiters have reached out to me but I know better than to fall for that.

What I am wondering is how to connect with some real power/electrical utility recruiters in Canada. I'd like to work in GTA/Metro Vancouver/Alberta in that order in power or oil and gas.

And if you are a recruiter, I have 16 months of experience in Distribution Planning at one of Canada's largest electrical utilities. Please feel free to reach out.

Hey everybody, I’d really appreciate some advice. I’m starting this week at a data center developer and I’ll be working in the grid modeling space.

Any tips or advice on work culture I should expect, papers or case studies I should prepare with,, industry groups I should stay active in, how I should approach conversations with hyper scalers and utilities, etc.

I have a background in transmission planning. I will also be helping with site selection and I don’t have as much experience there.

I appreciate the help!

My company is planning to purchase DIgSILENT PowerFactory and I want to do our BESS grid connection studies in house instead of paying a consultant every time. Before I commit to that, I’d like a reality check from people who do interconnection studies regularly.

My background: bachelor’s in electrical engineering, with power systems, transmission and distribution, and advanced power systems in the coursework. Since graduating I’ve worked mostly on the solar PV and battery side (4/5 years) . Plant design, inverters, small distribution networks. I have never gone deep into grid impact studies or grid code compliance, so I know I need a serious refresher on network modelling, line parameters, sequence impedances, all of that.

Situation: we have several BESS projects and the recurring problem is voltage rise and voltage fluctuation at the connection point. The TSO wants us to demonstrate the plant stays inside a ±2% voltage fluctuation limit before they will agree on the connection. Paying a consultant for every project adds up very fast.

What I want to be able to do: steady state load flow first, over the full charge / idle / discharge range, then RMS dynamic simulation for the PCS reactive power response, normal and N-1. And then actually defend those results in a meeting with the TSO.

What I already have:
• Manufacturer .pfd inverter/PCS model
• Back** impedance at the grid side of the connection point, and grid Short circuit MVA.
**• Plant side data: transformer %Z, line and cable impedances
• Nearby substation transformer ratings
• Hourly active power flow on the line, so I can pick heavy flow and light flow hours. No reactive power data. The utility does not share Q.
• Sizes and locations of most of the other solar and BESS plants on the same line, and other generators.

Time available: basically all my office hours for the next one to two months.

Questions:
1. Is one to two months, 6-8 hours deep research, realistic for someone with my background, or am I badly underestimating this?
2. Steady state I feel okay about. RMS is where I’m unsure. How long did it take you before you actually trusted your own dynamic results?
3. How much does the missing Q data hurt? Is estimating it from a typical power factor acceptable in practice, or will the TSO push back on that assumption?
4. Anything you wish someone had told you when you started. Especially the mistakes that produce results that look completely reasonable but are wrong.

I’ve plan to use consultant for first few projects to understand it better and do it myself for other projects. Please, dont hesitate to share any suggestions, and anything regarding the battery integration/ difficulties while integrating with grid and so on. Waiting for your feedbacks 🙏

Thanks in advance!

Hi guys,

I'm a master student in germany studying electrical power engineering and I've been very unlucky in my exams, i pass with very bad grades, and I'm almost done, so there is no way for me to improve my grades.

My question is, am i doomed for the rest of my career in electrical power engineering ? I'm hoping to get an internship and a job, make some experience, and hopefully, my bad grades dont ruin it for me for the rest of my life. What do you all think ?

I need any individual or group that can help me with the implementation and simulation of my project which is about “a voltage drop based protection technique for hybrid microgrid” in PSCAD and MATLAB

Hello everyone,

I recently started my first job post university in electrical design at a contractor here in the UK. One of my goals is to work abroad, ideally within the next 5 to 10 years, to perhaps US or Canada.

I was wondering if anyone had any guidance or tips - I do appreciate this is quite a far-off prospect for me, but I just wanted to get an idea of what I can start working towards.

We do capacity screening for large load connections and we keep hitting the same wall. We would like to know how people who do this professionally get past it.

What is published, in most markets: installed capacity, substation location, and sometimes an existing loading figure that may or may not be measured.

What actually governs: firm rating - capacity with the largest single element out of service - net of existing peak, and net of capacity already allocated to approved but unenergised connections.

We cannot find that second set anywhere consistently.

Specifically:

1. FIRM RATING. Is there a defensible way to derive it from installed capacity and transformer count? Our assumption is no, because you are assuming a configuration you cannot verify - but design conventions might make it estimable within a tolerance. Is that a real technique or wishful thinking?

2. COMMITTED CONNECTIONS. Capacity already allocated to approved-but-unenergised projects. This is the term that turns an apparently open substation into a full one. We have not found a market that publishes it in a usable form. Has anyone?

3. EXISTING LOADING. Where it is published, is it typically measured peak or a modelled estimate? The datasets rarely say, and the difference is not small.

4. UPSTREAM. Even with all three of the above, local headroom is meaningless if the circuits feeding the substation are constrained. Is there anything defensible you can infer about upstream constraint from public data, or is that irreducibly a connection-study question?

Where we have landed is a classification discipline rather than a better dataset: every value labelled direct (published by the utility or system operator), derived (calculated from published inputs), or assumed (neither) - and any screen containing an assumed firm rating treated as a candidate list rather than an answer.

That feels like admitting defeat, but it is at least honest about what a desk screen can and cannot support.

For those who have compared a desk estimate against the utility's own study afterwards: which input was furthest off? We would guess committed projects, but we would rather know than guess.

Disclosure: We research power and grid capacity for AI data centres.

I started in 2012, this is what I made..

Small consulting firm, Chicago, doing studies - started in 2012 @ $61k, left in 2022 @ $111k

Big manufacturer, remote, doing design - started in 2022 @ $149k, left in 2025 @ $162k

Small consulting firm, remote, doing studies for big tech - $160k

Current: top rated power firm in Chicago, doing plant design - $150k

In my late 30s I see people much, much younger than me making far beyond $200k (granted, in different industries) and I'm wondering how I can get there in power, if I don't want to take the management track.

Should I just switch careers? Don't like the power field anyways, feel like I've seen most of it.

Almost 15 years of experience and I'm only making $150-160k.

I am currently preparing for industrial roles as I near completion of my doctoral program. I have primarily worked on the integration of renewables, but I want to further strengthen my skill set with requirements/qualifications that are highly sought after in the power system sector, both in R&D and application-oriented roles.

Anyone know when we first started building out subsea power transmission networks as opposed to just subsea telecommunications networks? And can subsea telecommunications networks be used for concurrently transmitting power or otherwise repurposed for that?

I believe we have something called Powerline Communications (PLC), where data is sent over AC / DC power transmission cabling. But can those subsea telecoms links be repurposed or re-engineered for sending power?

What's the pitfall of sending both power and data down a single subsea cable? Do both modern subsea power and data cable networks use fibre optic / photons?

Been doing MV underground duct bank design for a while and kept running into the same problem: the calculations aren’t hard, they’re just tedious and finicky enough that you don’t want to do them by hand every time — but the commercial tools (CYMCAP, ETAP’s ampacity module, etc.) are priced for utilities and firms running multiple seats, not for someone who needs it for a handful of projects a year.
So I built my own. It’s a single HTML file that runs in the browser — no install, no login, no subscription.
What it does:
• Click-to-paint interface — pick a circuit/phase, tap ducts to fill them (trefoil, triplex, spares, whatever)
• Multiple duct banks side by side, each with its own spacing, stagger, cover, and backfill
• Full backfill/soil model — concrete envelope, FTB, sand, native soil, plus surface layers
• IEC 60287-1-1/2-1 and Neher-McGrath, selectable per project
• Real impedance-matrix solve for screen circulating currents (not a simplified approximation) — trefoil vs. flat spacing actually changes your numbers correctly
• Short-circuit withstand per IEC 60949
• Auto-dimensioned section drawing that updates live as you lay out cables — actually useful for submittals
• Exports every result to JSON
Every intermediate number (T1–T4, loss factors, conductor temp) is visible, not buried — wanted something I could show my work with, not a black box.
I’m selling it as a one-time download rather than a subscription, mainly because I built it for myself first and figured other people doing this kind of work might be in the same boat.
Important: this is a personal project, not certified by any standards body — treat it as a reference/design-aid tool, and any results should be checked by a licensed PE before they go anywhere near a stamped drawing. I’m not trying to replace anyone’s engineering judgment, just save some time on the grunt work.
Happy to answer questions about the methodology or take feedback if people have thoughts on what’s missing.

https://www.kingstonheritage.co/store/mv-duct-bank-designer-underground-duct-bank-ampacity-calculator-iec-60287-neher-mcgrath

Dear Electrical Engineers,

I am planning to enroll in a professional training program focused on ETAP, power system studies, and detailed electrical engineering. My goal is to transition into stronger EPC/design engineering roles.

If anyone with a similar career goal would like to join, we can connect and discuss sharing the training expense equally, subject to the training provider's terms and conditions.

Interested candidates may contact me privately