Electronics > Power/Renewable Energy/EV's

Power System Engineer Career

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zeke.:
I'm looking from some insight from some fellow electrical engineers.

I currently work in the defense contractor industry as an controls engineer. I work on some cool stuff pertaining to electric drives, but I'm looking into working for the utilities sector next. Power transmission, distribution and generation sounds interesting to me. A dream of mine is to eventually own some property and build my own PV system to go off the grid. I want to stay on the side of EE that involves interesting math, like inverter switching topologies(Sinewave PWM, Third harmonic injection, SVM...etc), stuff like this is really cool!

Is there technical work at utilities companies? If not, then whose doing the technical work in the power sector?
How competitive is the market to get a job at a utilities company?

mag_therm:
I knew a few who are in utilities or in the consultancies that service them.
Some  are PE Electrical, and work more as systems engineers, although one is a PhD and PE working in deep calculations for transmission.

I suggest you subscribe to the magazine "Pac-World". It is free to engineers and is weighted toward the technical side.
also articles and papers from the utility equipment vendors.
www.pacw.org

zeke.:
Awesome thank you!

NiHaoMike:

--- Quote from: zeke. on December 03, 2021, 02:17:34 am ---If not, then whose doing the technical work in the power sector?
--- End quote ---
Take a look at companies that specialize in making the equipment. Some names that I can think of are ABB, Delta Electronics, Eaton, Schneider Electric, SMA, and Sunpower.

Faringdon:
Are you doing math and design type work now? And are you young?
If not, it may be difficult to just walk into it elsewhere....just sayin.

Did your college tutor not recomend you for that kind of work when you left college?.....if not, then as i discussed, it may be difficult to suddenly get into it..but you never know.....try your luck on the job boards.

Why not build your own off grid inverter. Make it super long life by using the el caps an a way that garantees them long life...and make the fans failure proof by having them easily removeable....ie, make it more original than the stuff thats getting imported....then when youve done it, put it on your cv.....some company doing that will likely  come after you.

But remember, most of the design of this kind of stuff is done in the Far east now....and your country's  middle men will be importing the kit, and making themselves a fortune in the process......and gazzumping you (and me) out of a job.
I once took a job in a battery/solar company...but all the electronics and inverters etc was all just imported from Taiwan/China.

By the way, i'm actually working on a 5kW Inverter now to output mains. Give me a shout if you want to see some of the sims. The  output current range , and output power range, is very large, and this gives challenges for the PWM control circuitry. I also intend to adapt this for off grid.
I think the control may need to be software for the fet switching...but i wonder how far i can get with a switchable/reconfigurable_on_the_fly analog solution

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