Senior Resource Planning Analyst; or Resource Planning Analyst II

Xcel Energy (NASDAQ: XEL) is a leading energy provider and Fortune 500 company, dedicated to serving millions of electricity and natural gas customers across eight states:
Minnesota, Colorado, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota, New Mexico and Texas. We make energy work better for our customers, helping them thrive every day. That means always raising the bar - delivering better service and providing more reliable, resilient, and sustainable energy. Xcel Energy is a place where you’ll have opportunities to grow, expand your skills, and help lead the clean energy transition.

We offer meaningful rewards, recognition, and support to help you build your career and make an impact - both on the job and beyond. Most importantly, it means you’ll be joining a company that knows employees are the driving force behind its success and is committed to helping you be your best. Xcel Energy supports a hybrid work model to enable collaboration and flexibility.

Many roles are expected to work onsite three days per week (Tuesday–Thursday); however, work location expectations vary based on role, team, and business needs.

The job summary below and responsibilities reflect the Senior Resource Planning Analyst role. The successfully chosen candidate will be placed at a level that is commensurate with their skills and experience as different skills and/or experience will be required at the Resource Planning Analyst II and Resource Planning Analyst I levels. This modeling-focused team is responsible for model development, innovation, testing, and integration with the enterprise data fabric.

The team is composed of technical experts in economics, engineering, and mathematics. We are seeking subject matter experts with experience in capacity expansion and production cost analysis, nodal analysis, regional transmission analysis, reliability studies, or operations research related to the electric utility industry.

Model, analyze, and develop resource expansion plans to meet electric system growth requirements for the Xcel operating utility companies. Prepare and perform generation expansion modeling studies. Provide project management for resource solicitations and resource plan development, which requires developing recommendations based on extensive modeling and analysis by an analytical team including outside consultants. Prepare extensive reports for regulators. Present and defend recommendations to senior management.

Testify in administrative hearings. Investigate and develop quantitative techniques to improve analytical processes. Be a resource to Resource Planning Analysts. Be the generation planning expert for one of the larger Xcel Energy utilities. Accept responsibility for the most difficult analytical efforts required in the department.

Through extensive modeling and other quantitative techniques, develop comprehensive plans to obtain or add new capacity and energy resources (e.g. new generation plants) in the most cost-effective manner. Such plans and processes must be developed for each company and state, within resource planning / acquisition rules that govern the expansion of the system / addition of new generation and/or purchased power resources.

Project manage development of these resource plans for larger Xcel Energy operating utilities. Lead team in preparing and performing the modeling studies required to discover the optimal portfolio of generation resources to meet customer energy and peak demand. Such teams are often span 20-30 people across departments are including outside consultants. Recommend plan to senior officers. These recommendations often lead to decisions valued in excess of $1 billion dollars, undergo intense public…