As summer heats up across the Northern Hemisphere, we’ve been experiencing record-breaking temperatures here in the Pacific Northwest. Meanwhile, as the spread of the coronavirus pandemic continues to slow, we’ve re-opened our Kirkland, WA, office using a hybrid workplace philosophy, giving our employees the option to work from home, in the office, or a combination of both. This is the practice we’re using in all of our offices, and you can be confident that we are taking all necessary precautions and following our local guidelines to maintain the health and safety of our employees and visitors.
I’m proud to share some highlights of the work we’re doing worldwide in this our 76th issue of the PSC News. We’ve got informative articles from each of the regions where PSC is doing business, information about upcoming events and exciting client news. And, as always, we’re introducing all the new people who’ve joined PSC in the last couple of months.
In subsequent issues of the PSC News, I’ll invite some of my PSC colleagues from around the world to provide the introduction to this newsletter. They’ll offer insights about what’s happening in our industry from their point of view and allow you to hear from more of our leadership team.
We hope you enjoy this issue of the PSC News and encourage you to let us know if you’d like to share your industry articles or content with us. We’d love to include you.
Alex Boyd, PSC Group President & CEO
By Tracy Rolstad
Considerations for joining the Western Energy Imbalance Market – Part 3: Member cost savings and the benefits of participation
In this, the last article of a three-part series about the Western Energy Imbalance Market (EIM), we look at EIM member cost savings and the benefits of participation, and PSC Technical Director Tracy Rolstad answers some common questions about the EIM.
PSC and our partners have completed a survey of over 1600 kilometers of transmission line for New Zealand’s National Grid owner Transpower combining detailed modeling with dedicated vegetation management for the Phase 10 survey.
The PSC welcomes Heskin Mzungu as new APAC Power System Studies Team Leader
PSC continues to build out our management team as we gear up for growth, with Heskin Mzungu joining as our new Power Systems Studies Team Leader in the Asia Pacific region.
PSC’s evolving framework for delivering bespoke Market Management Systems
The complexity of highly regulated electricity market management systems calls for a hybrid framework for delivering tailor-made systems. This post explains why one size does not fit all in today’s energy markets and how PSC’s unique approach – based on solid software development skills and lessons learned – is an ever-evolving process.
Australia leans in on synthetic inertia for grid stability
PSC’s Roger Riley explains the inertia dilemma in balancing modern electricity grids and how Australia has utilized its asynchronous generation and storage to find cost-effective grid stability solutions.
WPD’s EPIC innovation project aims to integrate local electricity expectations by creating an automated approach to HV network analysis and making it a standardized part of WPD’s planning assumptions. It also gives local stakeholders a voice to provide input into how solutions to network constraints are selected.
Memorial Day is a time for Americans to reconnect with our history and core values by honoring those who gave their lives for our country’s ideals. This Memorial Day, we are especially grateful as we celebrate the life of one of our industry colleagues, Jim Knight, who lost his courageous battle with lung cancer in May this year.
CIRED (International Conference and Exhibition on Electricity Distribution) 2021 is being held virtually this year on 20-23 September. Congratulations to PSC’s own Grant McCormick for the acceptance of his paper, “Optimized Reactive Power Dispatch to Increase Network’s Electric Vehicle Hosting Capacity.” Michail Bitos’ paper, “Utilizing Forecasting Time Series Data and Flexibility Services to Manage Distribution Networks” has also been accepted.
PSC congratulates Sembcorp for the official opening of the Sembcorp Tengeh Floating Solar Farm at the Tengeh Reservoir in Singapore. With 122,000 solar panels spanning across 45 hectares (equivalent to about 45 football fields), the 60 megawatt-peak (MWp) solar photovoltaic (PV) farm is one of the world’s largest onshore floating solar PV systems. PSC is proud to be a consultant to Sembcorp, delivering the dynamic system and power quality studies prior to the energization of the solar farm in full compliance with all regulations. Watch this video about the project below.
PSC’s Zia Emin is one of the guest editors for this special issue of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) Generation, Transmission & Distribution publication. If you would like to be included, submissions open on 31 July and close on 30 September.
Sarah Parsons PSC welcomes Sarah Parsons to PSC as the Business & Strategy Manager. Sarah most recently worked as a Director for Northwest Center, a non-profit social enterprise based in Seattle. Before that, Sarah worked for the American Red Cross for eight years. She has been active in many local and national disaster response and recovery efforts in various capacities, where she has worked closely with federal, state, and local government partners. Sarah has a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from University of Washington and a Master of Public Administration from Seattle University. Sarah will be based in the Kirkland office.
Abdullah Al-Digs Abdullah joined PSC as an Associate System Studies Consultant, based in the Vancouver office. Abdullah completed his PhD degree at the University of British Columbia working on “Models and Methods for Power System Online Contingency Monitoring and Control”. He published several papers and has worked as a Teaching Assistant for several courses while at UBC.
Mario Gonzalez We welcome Mario Gonzalez to PSC. Mario is an Associate System Studies Consultant based in Vancouver, Canada. He will be supporting clients with interconnection studies. Mario recently completed his Master’s degree at the University of Saskatchewan with a focus on microgrid protection and control, and power system modeling. He has previously worked for different distribution and transmission utilities in Ecuador as a planning and studies engineer.
Tehseen Naqvi We are pleased to welcome Tehseen to the North American team as a Consultant. Tehseen has an extensive engineering background in Energy Management Systems EMS and ADMS, mainly with GE / Alstom e-terraplatform.Tehseen has decades of passionate devotion toimplementing and deploying GE suites of EMS and DMS, and has recently just commissioned an upgraded DMS for PPL. Tehseen is based in New York state.
— Asia Pacific —
Sohel Uddin PSC welcomes Sohel Uddin to PSC’s APAC Power Networks team. Sohel is an experienced Power Systems Engineer with extensive experience in power system modeling and analysis, power system studies including load flow and transient stability, power quality, and short circuit analysis, grid connection studies as per NER and renewable energy. Sohel will be based in the Brisbane office in Australia.
Alistair Parker Welcome toAlistair Parker who joins the APAC team as a Principal Advisor. Alistair is a senior executive within the Energy sector, recognized for his strategic leadership, customer vision and relationship building. He has delivered safe, transformational business outcomes to shareholders over many years through the people and capability of the teams he has built and led. His deep experience in the energy industry, in Australia, New Zealand and Europe, is across all aspects of large companies, including strategy, critical infrastructure asset management, regulation, operations, communications, advocacy, crisis management and people development. Alistair will be based in Melbourne, Australia.
Jerry Jia Welcome to Jerry Jia who joins the Melbourne Power Systems Team as a Senior Power Systems Engineer. Jerry is an electrical engineer with comprehensive skills in power system modeling. Jerry has performed power system studies (for various renewables projects in industry standard programs PSS®E and PSCAD) and has acted as Grid Connection Manager. His experience covers the development of Generator Performance Standards, connection feasibility studies and GPS due diligence. Jerry has worked with a wide range of inverter manufacturers and is familiar with the different offered simulation models and control philosophies.
Ali Meghdadi PSC welcomes Ali Meghdadi who joins the APAC Power Systems Team as a Student Power Systems Engineer. Ali is a PhD candidate student from Monash University with over three years of engineering and four years of teaching experience and is proficient in programing, providing data analysis, and developing data models. Ali will be based in the Melbourne office.
Kate Watson We welcome Kate Watson to our PSC Power Networks team. Kate is a 4th year student at Queensland University of Technology studying a double degree in Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Electrical) and Bachelor of Science (Environmental). She joined us as an Undergraduate Power Systems Consultant and when the university starts again she will be working three days a week, based in our Brisbane office. During the past summer holidays, she has worked as undergraduate / vacation engineer in Aurecon and Energy Queensland before joining PSC.
Kane Byles Welcome to Kane Byles. Kane is a Power Systems Engineer with experience encompassing a variety of areas such as MV and LV power distribution, database design, control systems design and functional safety. Kane has had significant involvement in engineering projects for Snowy Hydro Limited and Stanwell Corporation Limited. Kane’s work experience covers specific control engineering roles such as producing concept and detailed control system designs, electrical design drawings, formulating I/O and alarm lists, instrumentation upgrade paths and validating control systems against the functional safety IEC 61511 standard. Kane will be part of the Power Network Solutions team in Brisbane.
— Europe —
Paul Tasker PSC welcomes Paul Tasker to the PSC UK Engineering team, adding to the protection capabilities. He joins us from GE where he has spent many years, starting initially as a commissioning engineer but then moving to an office based environment designing and implementing electrical schemes and producing commissioning switching programs, as well as configuring relay logic. Paul will be based in the Stafford office.
Mahmoud Elkazaz PSC welcomes Mahmoud who joins us fresh from completing his PhD in Electrical Engineering (Energy Technology), at Nottingham University. Prior to that Mahmoud worked as a Research Associate as well as a Power Systems engineer for XNX Group in Dubai, Carbon Legacy Ltd in the UK and for Madkour Construction Group in Egypt. Mahmoud’s interest is oriented towards optimal power flow analysis, power system control and operation, development of energy management algorithms relating in particular to Smart Grids and peer-to-peer energy trading. Mahmoud will be based in the Warwick office.
Jonathan Cervantes PSC welcomes Jonathan Cervantes to the Europe Power Networks team. Jonathan has recently completed his Master’s Degree in Advanced Electrical Power Engineering at Newcastle University. Prior to that Jonathan worked with GyA Electrical Solutions in Mexico where he undertook various studies in Power Quality, Short-circuit, Arc-Flash and Protection coordination in medium and high voltage industrial installations. Jonathan will be based in the Warwick office.
