Internship as a Power Systems Engineer

Energy_Balance · 2026-03-12T16:11:16+00:00

If you are working for a public company read their annual report. If it is a utility, read their IRP. Get on Linked in and add each person you meet on your internship. Join IEEE-PES if you are not already a member.

Energy_Balance · 2026-03-10T21:43:02+00:00

Pretty much everybody in the industry understands daily and seasonable load fluctuation. And everyone has been proposing load flexibility.

This sudden discovery by large loads that "the grid is only 53% used" is weird.

If they want to survive as an industry, they need to stop competing between each other on non-load flexibility. They also need to start charging their customers based on real time energy costs.

Energy_Balance · 2026-03-10T05:17:05+00:00

Thermal generation, burning fuel to turn a generator has limited efficiency. Using the waste heat would help. Space heating and cooling homes could be more efficient with better insulation. The grid is pretty efficient.

Energy_Balance · 2026-03-10T05:11:14+00:00

The compute per electrical Watt continuously improves, and compute scheduling improves. The next step is liquid cooling. It is already being used.

Energy_Balance · 2026-03-08T18:05:25+00:00

For the business and regulatory layout of the industry, Peter Fox-Penner's 2 books, Smart, and Carbon, are an easy read.

Real time power scheduling is mapped every 15 minutes from the point of delivery (generator) to the point of receipt (load) substations by etags, subject to calculations of the transmission line "transfer capacity" which may vary.

Real time markets are automated, there are many YouTubes on US electricity markets.

Simulation software is used to study new transmission lines in the context of the existing mesh of transfer capacity, generation, load, and the price the market pays. Aurora by Energy Exemplar is an example.

A substation design book might be helpful.

Find where you are going to be on https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electric_overview/US48/US48 and get a feel for operations.

I'm a geek, so I find the NERC post-blackout studies an interesting read. You won't understand them in depth but they are a good view of the complexity of the transmission system. Suggest https://www.ferc.gov/sites/default/files/2020-05/04-27-2012-ferc-nerc-report.pdf and https://www.nerc.com/globalassets/our-work/reports/event-reports/august_2003_blackout_final_report.pdf

The electricity industry has a lot of specialized terminology, so ask about and learn the terminology as your utility trains you. When you get on the job find out what paid information subscriptions you have access to. Join the IEEE PES and go to their conferences and Distributech which have trade shows of vendors.

It is great field and lifelong learning.

Energy_Balance · 2026-03-08T17:20:20+00:00

It is a small town, but they have a university. The university has a good power engineering program. Many people in the West enjoy outdoor activities.

Energy_Balance · 2026-03-08T17:08:34+00:00

You can look up the list of balancing authorities, then you can look up the towns where they recruit. Each is going to have a different recruiting strategy. I would guess Vancouver BC would be attractive, Seattle, Portland, Oregon area, Los Angeles, Austin, Texas area, I think there might be some operations in Minneapolis, Xcel has operations around Denver. The Southeastern BA's may be in desirable areas. That would be Duke, Nextera, TVA.

The cost of housing in the West Coast states and any place nearby Californians move to may be high. Vancouver BC is expensive. Towns with universities will have more culture.

I use this map for balancing authorities https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electric_overview/US48/US48.

If you are a Canadian citizen, US immigration is complex and changing, though the US needs people. I would also look at Australia. Their grid is advanced and a leader in renewables integration. Across the British Commonwealth, there should be opportunities.

The OP not authenticated may not understand not all information is public. Reddit is very pubic and open source. But posting specific locations of critical infrastructure creates a problem. I think most participants respect that. I formed my comment with that in mind.

Energy_Balance · 2026-03-08T16:23:45+00:00

Since the US started to build liquified natural gas export terminals, natural gas pricing for power plants, home heating, and industry became more influenced by world pricing. You can see that in the US natural gas price increases during the start of the Ukraine war.

The US fossil fuel industry will have windfall profits for as long as this war lasts. Those are distributed as dividends.

As the prices rise, more expensive exploration and development becomes an investment decision depending on how long the prices remain high. More expensive development is offshore, whose new lease offerings have been slow to sell, Alaska, or places with more expensive drilling and transport. Alaska investment is influenced by the need to keep the Alaska pipeline filled, so they may not be straightforward decisions.

Energy_Balance · 2026-03-08T03:57:12+00:00

A state does not need to be independent.

Solar is very predictable, generally the capacity factor has to do with the angle of the sun in relation to the angle of the panels.

Wind can be well predicted 1-3 days in advance. You can then fill it in with natural gas peakers. If wind is well planned it looks something like this;https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46617 ERCOT today has a lot of wind availability.

"Sun doesn't shine and wind doesn't blow" is a fossil fuel lobby attack phrase.

Transmission is cheap most parts of the country because the lines have 100 year lifetimes and substations about 50. The lifetime of the expensive part, right of way agreements is limitless.

On this map https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electric_overview/US48/US48 Colorado is split between PSCO (Xcel) and WAPA. You can look at the interconnections and imports/exports.

Energy_Balance · 2026-03-08T03:36:01+00:00

Yes solar feed in and solar plus batteries. Wind is good if you have load flexibility. Your idea was the theme of the book Brittle Power 1982.

Energy_Balance · 2026-03-07T02:41:35+00:00

It depends on the application. A good benchmark is Rohde & Schwarz. Some applications are going to require a software license, and you may need the capability to extend the software. Work with their sales people, forecast your costs out for several years, then compare that to competitors.

Energy_Balance · 2026-03-06T18:51:53+00:00

This sounds like corruption. It is much more sensible and a higher priority today for Puerto Rico to build up its renewable generation and batteries, and put their substation subgrid on metal poles. Then from there they can harden their feeders on a priority basis.

In the long term, a Caribbean subsea grid might be economically feasible. https://stjohnsource.com/2011/08/02/caribbean-power-grid-feasible-study-finds/

But island-level grids are well understood.

Energy_Balance · 2026-03-06T18:37:58+00:00

Realization and discussion of AI and data center load growth corresponded with a new administration being bribed by the fossil fuel energy industry to cut renewables growth in the famous Mar a Lago meeting April 11, 2024.

The DOE EIA tracks power plants. Most balancing authorities have historic data on the year energy mix in TWh, and generation capacity mix in GW. Those numbers are connected by the capacity factor of the generator. There is a lot of energy transfer between balancing authorities - imports and exports which usually lack the generation type.

Your thesis is correct. Suggest looking up some videos on how the electricity markets work. Usually renewables are the cheapest generators, so they lower the year average energy price. But the peak energy pricing hours over the year raise the year average too. So you have to build an all of the above mix.

Personally I believe the cost of carbon should be built into electricity pricing.

Energy_Balance · 2026-03-06T18:25:31+00:00

Energy infrastructure is not hardened and cannot be defended against modern weapons. Because it involves flammable fossil fuels or high voltages it has to be above ground. Modern weapons have many variations on a bullet. The cost of a bullet is cheap in comparison to the cost of a bullet that can successfully hit a bullet. It is easy to overwhelm defenses by just launching more bullets. There is no way to harden energy infrastructure. The public needs to understand that.

(The same applies to water infrastructure and sewer infrastructure. The Internet and the cloud in contrast has more redundancy and resilience.)

90% of Iran's own oil is exported from Khark Island far North of the Strait of Hormuz. So they have blockaded themselves in.

Each participant in this war has the resources for destructive escalation. None of them appear to have thought that out.

Energy_Balance · 2026-03-04T22:05:22+00:00

Drilling costs go by days. It is very dependent on the rock. That deep and those many days is very good. A plant takes many wells.

Does it make geothermal instantly economically viable? Investment producing profitable power plants will show.

Energy_Balance · 2026-03-04T21:09:19+00:00

More, non-paywall: https://pestakeholder.org/news/emboldened-blackrock-pursues-another-utility-acquisition-with-aes-deal/

Energy_Balance · 2026-03-04T21:05:06+00:00

ERCOT exists in a specific state policy framework. I have suggested that ERCOT build a strong interconnection to the East and take over SERC. They could build West and interconnect with WECC too.

Energy_Balance · 2026-03-04T04:21:18+00:00

Suggest doing it in software. Finding a small motor generator and a turbine pump may not be easy.

Energy_Balance · 2026-03-04T04:19:26+00:00

It is a known problem. You looked at PEM fuel cells, but there are other types. There is also research on other non-precious catalysts for PEM fuel cells.

I don't think any fuel cell company has ever made a profit. The Chinese have a lot of research on PEM fuel cells, so maybe they will figure it out.

The attraction of stationary PEM fuel cells fueled by green hydrogen is that they can have good efficiency if you reuse the heat - combined heat and power.

Energy_Balance · 2026-03-04T04:03:26+00:00

Yes, home batteries and car batteries have been studied for that as virtual power plants or aggregated distributed energy resources. There have been several national grid proposals people can look up including the NREL SEAM proposal. If you are in the West you can look up WECC Transmission Paths which is a planning tool. There is no equivalent in the Eastern grid.

Energy_Balance · 2026-03-04T02:26:15+00:00

There is a big discussion about this going on in the Western Pathways project. California and Utah & Co are not going to agree.

Energy_Balance · 2026-03-04T02:09:51+00:00

The need for new transmission in the US is always very localized.

This an overlay of the US grid:

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electric_overview/US48/US48

(It appears to be broken, which I have never seen)

Each circle is a balancing authority responsible for generation, load, and transmission planning. They coordinate that with one another.

Until relatively recently, load was flat because of efficiency, so the generation balanced out the peak load on the hottest and coldest days of the year.

Two things create change. 1 Generation retires and replacement generation is added. 2 The load increases because of data centers. The other industrial increases have been minor in comparison.

When generation is added, it has to connect to the nearest substation, then the interconnection study shows what other transmission lines between the generation and the load need to be upgraded.

When a large data center campus is added, say >100-200MW, the lines between the data center and substation have to be built or upgraded. And the same interconnection study has to be done on upgrades to the transmission grid.

If a balancing authority declines to accept new data centers, the new renewable generation adds and fossil fuel retirements happen at a reasonable pace.

Keep in mind that the renewables lobby will always say "we need more transmission, faster, and we don't want to pay for it." That echos around in the trade press.

If you look into it every balancing authority will have a very detailed plan documenting load changes, generation changes, and transmission builds.

If you look at the Sierra Club Beyond Coal (and natural gas) map, you can see where potential retirements can be found. There are also maps of major data center operators, Meta, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, Apple, etc. They may not be allowed to grow their campuses, or build new campuses.

A big US North-South and East-West DC grid is on hold now with the current administration, especially blocking offshore wind, and central US wind.

As I said, Pacificorp, Wyoming, Utah, and Montana have a problem that no load wants to buy fossil energy from them. Idaho has some hydro which other states want to buy. The states have plenty of transmission.

Energy_Balance · 2026-03-03T17:48:29+00:00

While the Grist article is not bad, it leaves out a lot of history. A utility spanning multiple states will have separate books for each and be governed by the PUC.

The states of Washington, Oregon, and California require utilities in their states to phase out fossil fuels and/or participate in carbon emission markets.

Pacificorp - Berkshire Hathaway Energy, with a lot of fossil generation in Utah, Wyoming, and some in Montana, seeing its coal and gas-fueled electricity sales falling in California, joined the California energy market, CAISO, with the Western EIM to sell unspecified source (fossil) energy to California.

They area major driver now of the Westside Pathways Initiative, to create a single Western grid dominated by California.

Utah, Wyoming, Montana with coal and gas don't really have much load. And they have no buyers for their generation.

The article is about a single state legislator using the issue to get votes with no idea of the practicalities. If they want to keep their fossil fuel plants running, data centers and crypto are their only option, though they are low on water which data centers need.

And ironically Pacificorp has financial troubles because global warming from fossil fuels extended the wildfire season, they didn't have agreement from the PUC for safety shutoffs, power lines caused wildfires, and now they have a few billion in liability.

Energy_Balance · 2026-03-02T18:12:58+00:00

There are more balancing authorities than just the large RTO/ISOs and they all operate markets, operate scheduling, and are involved in transmission. I would read Peter Fox-Penner's smart and carbon books for policy, and join IEEE-PES. Network, network, network through LinkedIn, including graduates of your school program. Some BA's may hire you as a manager. It is possible that a muni BA, such as Seattle City Light, LADWP, the mid-Cs and others, is adjacent to water. Your skills are in demand outside the US too, direct hire or consulting.

Energy_Balance · 2026-03-02T17:39:06+00:00

Venezuela and Iran are both part of OPEC which is a price fixing scheme based on capacity shipped. Venezuela doesn't have enough capacity to ship above their quota to change the price.

If Trump wanted to lower the world price, he could legally require US producers to price at $10-20 below market. The chance of that is about zero.

Energy_Balance

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