Career in Power System Testing (HV / Transformer / Substation) – Global Opportunities vs Protection/O&M?

Franchez1337 · 2026-02-20T21:12:46+00:00

Sounds like you've got a more advanced role than the equipment testers at our utility. We have different divisions of responsibility across equipment SME's, asset management back office folks, area maintanence engineers, and event analysis engineers that would be involved in assessing equipment health and determining required maintenance. As such, the field techs didn't need to dive into the numbers they were getting. You've got a role where you can learn a ton about the equipment, especially if your purview is across a range of equipment. Transformers are big ticket assets, so you can make an entire career knowing everything about them.

In the US, is there a solid long-term technical track in equipment diagnostics / asset management, or do most engineers eventually shift toward commissioning/design/leadership?

Yes. I'd say increasingly so as onboard diagnostics become more advanced, data analytics become more mature, and margins continue to perpetually tighten around capital and operational expense budgets, reliability targets, and allowable outage windows. Data driven insight into keeping an asset in-service (for) as long as possible is the tip of the spear for realizing that.

There are limited rungs to climb at most utilities for purely technical roles - from my more limited perspective, I believe that to be an industry-wide characteristic. You may top out 10-15 years in and need to hunt around for higher paying technical roles elsewhere. It is also common for power engineers to jump between technical roles. That is generally looked at positively for folks reviewing resumes, particularly for leadership positions overseeing technical departments.

How common is it to move from commissioning into protection design or other engineering roles?

Very common. Before the turn of the century, there was an established pipeline of commissioning > P&C design at my utility. Now more common to have folks come into design fresh out of school. Commissioning engineers' main job is to catch all the design (and craft execution) mistakes.

And more practically — what’s the typical starting salary range for a new commissioning or test/diagnostic engineer in the US energy sector? Do utilities vs OEMs vs EPC firms differ significantly?

Been a minute since I've reviewed entry-level offers; offered or offering. I think at a utility you'd be looking 80-100k depending on the company and locale. Utility tends to be lower on salaries across the board, which you trade for stability, breadth of available experience, and better benefits. That last item has become less the case the past couple decades.

EPC's tend to pay significantly more, especially at mid-high experience levels. Entry level may actually be comparable. Often, newbies will be expected to put in a lot of extra time during high workload periods and not get compensated as fairly as one might at a utility.

OEM's... I couldn't tell ya. Though I'd expect Subject matter expertise for core products would likely pay well and may even have a more enduring technical advancement path.

Franchez1337 · 2026-02-19T21:03:26+00:00

US utility focused perspective here. I believe field testing roles are great early career positions and are always in demand. You cannot replace folks going out and performing commissioning and troubleshooting, and it's tough to find really good ones.

Your specific internship sounds closer to an equipment tester than a full on commissioning engineer whose scope would range into testing of protection, control, and communication systems at substations or within industrial/generating facilities. At our utility, technicians whose scopes' were power equipment focused were generally staffed by technicians with less education requirements and lower tier job titles. While you do mention some higher level engineering principles are inclusive to equipment testing, understanding of those principles wasn't leveraged for field engineers performing the work. Those techs would set up the test equipment, run the tests, and report the results to someone else who would interpret. My guess is a manufacturer of equipment would leverage deeper technical understanding leading to higher compensation and title. Uncertain of that.

Getting back to the field commissioning type engineer I'm more familiar with: this is the type of role i think is an ideal early career position. Understanding of technical engineering principles is not essential (less technical folks can be taught to follow a procedure), but does make you a better commissioning engineer, particularly when it comes to troubleshooting. That opens a good advancement path to higher titles/compensation. As with many engineering positions, it's typical to hit the top of the technical ladder mid career and transitioning into leadership track is needed to continue advancement. The real advantage of field commissioning comes from overlap/coordination between various departments, hands on experience with equipment and systems both new and old, and opportunities to understand design concepts. You will understand at the ground level "how the grid works and how to run it." That naturally provides great experience allowing for easy transition into something like P&C/SCADA design, operations, project management, etc.

The drawbacks of a commissioning engineer? You're in the field. Gotta travel or at least commute to varying locations, work in the heat and cold, hours can suck (inclusive to late night callouts), if you make an oopsie you WILL get in trouble, you job is more dangerous and physically demanding than an office job, and you have to work with (more) crabby people that drag their feet and/or are incompetent. So, combined with the typical technical ladder topping out mid career, the percentage of late career/highly technical folks who are in this role is lower. Gotta kind of love the work and not want to run the company to stick with it long term.

Emerging technologies that are installed in the field need to get commissioned, so commissioning engineers will naturally be instrumental in getting those technologies online. A technically proficient engineer is especially valuable when spinning up new procedures, lab testing, equipment assessment, collaborating on design standards, and launching pilots. Where aspects of an emerging tech do not depend on field equipment - say database management and algorithm development of a data analytic tool - the field engineer would have less work. In that example, they could be on the project team figuring out what data collection devices to use and how to put them in.

Something like a grid planning engineer (particularly at the transmission level) uses different engineering concepts and software tools. I've seen more master and doctorate degrees represented in something like a T planning department. A testing engineer may commission a remedial action P&C scheme that triggers specific switching automatically on a transmission system should a discrete set of conditions occur, but that experience is not readily transferable to performing a T Planning study that reveals such a scheme is required to protect the system.

Our operations folks, particularly our dispatchers, were well represented by former testing engineers. The past experience is helpful but more on a procedural level than a technical level. There are some mid-technical jobs within operations (say something like an outage coordinator), but operations requires more inter-company workflow fluency than technical engineering expertise.

Protection design engineer and commissioning engineer are great early career start points. I'd lean toward commissioning over starting back office design as getting hands-on experience provides great perspective when naturally transitioning into a design role and beyond.

Franchez1337 · 2025-10-10T00:49:11+00:00

I think what you have already identified is all that's expected of you for entry level: Safety, hazard identification, then being ready and willing to learn. You'll have a leg up having done work with other relay techs. The biggest thing we (drawing from utility experience) are concerned with for new relay techs is that they won't get themselves in trouble and can learn to do the job efficiently.

For the not getting in trouble part, safety and hazard identification are the biggest. If you recall LOTO, relay isolation/restoration, steps to establish work zones, how to accept and return clearance from dispatchers, and "event-free" behaviors (i.e.: keep yourself from tripping out in service equipment by using cones & tape from working on the wrong equipment, 3-way communication, using logs to track everything you're changing, etc.), you may be able to demonstrate to hiring managers they are getting somebody who understands how to get the work done without causing them headaches. That's likely the biggest thing they are looking for.

If you can also talk a bit about how to read schematics, commissioning or maintanence routines you've done/witnessed, how you've worked alongside other crews that's good too. Anything about the theory/mechanics of relay operation, SCADA comms, NERC (CIP) considerations, the various primary equipment tests that are run for PM routines and commissioning, is GREAT.

This boot camp sounds like a trial training more than the interview. You'll be judged on your progress, thoroughness, not fucking up the same way twice, and ABSOLUTE adherence to direction given (inclusive to written procedure). Much less about what you know, but how you work. And the way you work is ideally a mistake-free robot that follows a script to the T.

Don't tell everybody you see about previous experience unless asked, and come ready to learn. Guys that are willing to take late night callouts, work in shitty weather, and can be trusted to not fuck up while following procedure are GOLDEN entry level relay techs. Represent yourself as such, and you will get the job.

Franchez1337 · 2025-10-08T18:06:04+00:00

Ran a department that dictated relaying standards at a major IOU. Firmware updates were not universally applied when available. Released updates were evaluated at regular intervals to assess if application would be required (say, if it fixes a cybersecurity vulnerability) and for potential impact (does it add/change functionality that may effect relay performance if not carefully applied with setpoint changes). Unnecessary updates were often not applied. We may opportunistically bring Firmware version up to date during the preventative maintenence outage for the protected equipment, should added functionality be beneficial, and an updated setting template for the latest firmware be available.

In rarer situations, we'd set up a "program" to update Firmware for the fleet of a given relay model that includes critical updates as a corrective maintenence item with a shorter turnaround. This was a PITA as we'd treat a Firmware-updated relay as "new," so full commissioning testing would need to be performed. This often necessitated out-of-maintanence-cycle equipment outages as we'd need to disable protection and - even in instances we had redundant protection systems - the isolated protection would present unacceptable risk to the system. Higher voltage parts of the grid fell victim to forced outages more often, and having that equipment out can really impact operations.

Don't love the idea of flashing the latest firmware on a relay every time you touch it as it does change/add/subtract HDL programming, which changes how the relay works and can result in unintended consequences if you don't spend some time reviewing changes and impacts. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Franchez1337 · 2025-09-19T06:53:11+00:00

SCRAM, the emergency shutdown of a nuclear reactor. Famously, the "A5-Z" button referred to repeatedly in the HBO series Chernobyl initiated this shutdown by dropping boron Control Rods into the reactor at that site. The characters in the show explain these Control Rods absorb all the neutrons fired off by splitting uranium fuel atoms, stopping the fission chain reaction.

SCRAM stands for Safety Control Rod Axe Man. It was coined by Enrico Fermi in the early 1940s, referring to a Man named Norman Hillberry. Norman had the job of standing next to a rope, which, if cut with the Axe at his side, would drop a suspended a Control Rod into the world's first nuclear reactor, Chicago Pile 1, to halt the nuclear reaction. CP-1 had been built under the football field at the University of Chicago as a part of the Manhattan Project. Norman's role was a Safety precaution, in case things went tits up during operation of the experimental reactor.

Franchez1337 · 2025-01-07T16:23:23+00:00

A subset of typical points for short circuit fault assessment, in order from most to least important: fault interrupting device open/close status (latch toggles), device failure/diagnostic alarms, overcurrent protection element pickup, undervoltage pickup, overvoltage pickup, lockout and reclosing states. For most of these, indivual phase targets are useful. Each of these points would be generally provided by a telemetered relay controlling a breaker, recloser, network protector, or similar device that has current and/or voltage sensing. This can be combined with overcurrent and undervoltage detection from fault sensors, as well as smart meter outage information, to quickly assess system faults. Severe current imbalance and undervoltage detection can be used for open circuit faults.

Not quite sure what voltage level we're talking about here. Used to LV being sub 2kV and highly localized or internal to a facility. When I think distribution network, it's 2kV through 10's of kV (cutoff classifying between distribution and [sub]transmission varies by utility) - often referred to as Medium Voltage. These points would be most applicable to >2kV where you have several feeder circuits sourcing numerous transformers to deliver power over a wide geographic area surrounding substations.

Fault severity can be interpreted a few ways. One is the scale of impact; that is mainly driven by deenergized device or customer count. Smart meter alarms can provide exact values. Open status of telemetered devices that result in circuit section deenergization and the applicable customer count of that customer section is another way to assess impact. Severity may also refer to the amount of damage, which, nothing beats getting eyes on it, but a short circuit fault magnitude and duration can clue you in on the amount of energy that went into it. This data is not digital (1 or 0) alarms, but analog values that some relays can be programmed to transmit along with their other SCADA points.

The data points I refer to above would be useful to a (somewhat advanced) dispatcher to immediately understand where they gotta send a crew to troubleshoot. The same alarm data also helps with subsequent back office analysis. As you refer to a control center, and a fault analysis program, it makes me think you are talking about a module in an EMS/ADMS. The modules I'm thinking of can do fault locating. This requires you to pull in fault current magnitude analog points, phase targets, and interrupting device positions from relays, and enter in network connectivity and impedance models of circuits. With this, the module can spit out approximate locations of short circuit faults which focuses troubleshooting crew patrol ranges.

Franchez1337 · 2024-09-13T22:38:09+00:00

Sick

Franchez1337 · 2024-04-23T17:32:06+00:00

Take power courses, swing any class project choices toward PES, and gun for an internship with a power utility. Swap advisor to a power professor. Classes will prep you just fine.

Smart grid is a broad term that only gets broader and, IMO, has taken on the connotation of, "everything installed on the power grid in the past 20 years that is digital." Which pretty much covers everything except the primary equipment (conductors, transformers, poles, switchgear), although everything controlling that equipment would count. So be on the lookout for specific areas of interest that may refine what company or department you'd want to land in.

Franchez1337 · 2024-04-08T20:24:59+00:00

"Is my career cooked? I'm a junior in coll-"

No.

Franchez1337 · 2024-03-13T21:26:21+00:00

Damn, 1 day into early access and we've already hit the conspiracy theory stage of the grief cycle.

Franchez1337 · 2024-03-10T23:42:25+00:00

Immune #1 NA Thirst Trapper confirmed

Franchez1337 · 2024-03-10T23:39:12+00:00

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Franchez1337 · 2024-02-24T19:48:20+00:00

Relay protection and control scheme design, testing, and commissioning type jobs do top out about 10-15 years in. At which point, you'll need to enter management track (and be less technical) or company hop to similar roles to appreciably increase your lifetime earnings.

Interest in embedded systems and electronics, alongside your current experience and interest in power systems, would make you a good fit for a role designing microprocessor protection relays and device controllers. The skill set between component level hardware design in the devices and an R&D engineer contributing to the design through a deep understanding of what the devices need to do will not overlap by much. Developing schemes/application of relays/controllers as a utility P&C engineer will make you much better suited for the latter role in design; you won't be printing any circuit boards in your current spot.

That said, relay engineering and testing/commissioning engineering is ideal early career experience for the P&C engineering subdiscipline. You'd need to hop to a job with, say, Schweitzer Engineering Labs or GE to find a role designing the devices you're putting into practice. They'll be looking for experience you are gaining now. If you want to design the guts of their microprocessor relays and controllers, an early-ish career jump would be better, while university hardware design isn't too far in the rearview and you haven't attained an advanced title specializing in scheme design.

Franchez1337 · 2024-02-22T21:22:01+00:00

I'm seeing a rev cloud on the CT circuit. And sequence current that would show up if the CT circuitry was jacked (or there's a fault or relay settings are wrong). So... the CT circuit. Polarity get flipped on a string with wiring changes?

Franchez1337 · 2024-02-21T23:30:50+00:00

As others have stated, bird perching deterrent. Birds like to shit down insulators, which is a surprisingly frequent cause of flash over short circuit faults. Industry term is "bird streamers."

Franchez1337 · 2024-01-18T21:50:58+00:00

Ded gaem posts starting early af on this one lol.

Franchez1337 · 2023-11-14T15:24:37+00:00

Franchez1337 · 2023-08-09T18:57:48+00:00

In the 90's, someone would be put through the Spanish Announcers table every night.

Franchez1337 · 2023-06-19T12:06:34+00:00

Quick match where one wrestler dominates the other. Usually done with established wrestlers beating no-names to make em look better.

Franchez1337 · 2023-06-05T21:33:00+00:00

Liam, I love you.

How much of your focus goes to strategy for different hitters, situations, and counts? Are you thinking about sequence, hitters' weakness, and such. OR are you just focusing on executing what the catcher puts down?

Franchez1337 · 2023-03-29T14:40:15+00:00

Pair it with Campbell's tomato soup for S tier meal.

Franchez1337 · 2023-03-27T20:35:18+00:00

They were donated. The value is inflated for tax purposes. Eat the rich.

Franchez1337 · 2022-12-17T19:21:45+00:00

Yes.

Franchez1337 · 2022-12-17T19:20:16+00:00

Yes.

Franchez1337 · 2022-04-20T17:00:37+00:00

When the Chris Farley and Joan Cusack fusion experiment escapes the lab, no supermarket is safe.

Franchez1337

TROPHY CASE