Power Systems Research Engineer – Grid Modeling & Planning

Overview

At PNNL, our core capabilities are divided among major departments that we refer to as Directorates within the Lab, focused on a specific area of scientific research or other function, with its own leadership team and dedicated budget.

Our Science & Technology directorates include National Security, Earth and Biological Sciences, Physical and Computational Sciences, and Energy and Environment. In addition, we have an Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, a Department of Energy, Office of Science user facility housed on the PNNL campus.

The Energy and Environment Directorate (EED) delivers science and technology solutions for the nation’s biggest energy and environmental challenges. Our more than 1,700 staff support the Department of Energy (DOE), delivering on key DOE mission areas including: modernizing our nation’s power grid to maintain a reliable, affordable, secure, and resilient electricity delivery infrastructure; research, development, validation, and effective utilization of renewable energy and efficiency technologies that improve the affordability, reliability, resiliency, and security of the American energy system;

and resolving complex issues in nuclear science, energy, and environmental management.

The Electricity Infrastructure and Buildings Division (EI&BD), part of EED, is accelerating the transition to an efficient, resilient, and secure energy system through basic and applied research. We leverage a strong technical foundation in power and energy systems and advanced data analytics to drive innovation, transform markets, and shape energy policy.

Within this division, the Power System Modeling Group (PSMG) develops advanced simulation, analysis, and optimization tools to understand and enhance grid performance across all levels, from the bulk energy system to the distribution grid.

PNNL seeks a creative and inter-disciplinary power system engineer to develop model enhancements for conventional power system models (primarily production cost models and expansion planning models) to represent changing system constraints and dependencies imposed by the rapid growth of our Nation’s energy system. The selected candidate is expected to participate in the development, deployment, and application of open-source power system models that integrate tools for capacity expansion, resource adequacy, production cost modeling, and powerflow to answer complex questions across multiple modeling regimes.

The successful candidate will use integrated, multi-scale models to explore and quantify the benefits of novel management and optimization strategies that coordinate electric power decision considering evolving policies and new load paradigms. The candidate will use these tools to investigate how policies and incentives will impact our nation’s electrical infrastructure and recommend strategies to mitigate future challenges.

Key Responsibilities:

The successful candidate would be expected to be a senior subject matter expert to projects within their field of specialization. The position will lead teams of junior scientists and engineers and will be responsible for delivering technical tasks with the level of quality, timeliness, and cost, to meet required project and client expectations. The desired engineer will:

• Provide subject matter expertise within multi-disciplinary teams with a focus on power system optimization, resource adequacy, reliable capacity expansion, and the related policies that must be enacted.
• Provide electric system simulations with a good working knowledge of grid topology and transmission planning, operational costs and optimization, system constraints, and financial analysis.
• Lead model enhancements activities and participate in the design of simulation experiments, evaluation of technology performance, or development of scientific and engineered solutions to assess or solve a variety of technical problems.
• Broadly apply theory to the development and implementation of new tools including applications, algorithms, models, and visualization.
• Publish research results, targeting peer reviewed journals and other written reports.
• Build strong teams for…