Engineer I or Engineering Technical Spec I (Electric Transmission) - SHPE National Convention

Job Summary

At Dominion Energy we love our jobs. That’s right. Love. Every day we go to work filled with passion to be excellent, to creatively problem solve and to innovate. These are exciting days for energy companies, and Dominion Energy aims to shape the future of energy in America. We are looking at all of our work with fresh eyes, retooling everything we do, in every part of the company, to operate more sustainably and to deliver energy more reliably than ever. We are looking for interesting, independent thinkers and doers who can help shape the culture of a forward-looking company that’s proud of its rich legacy. Are you a change agent? Do you think differently? Do you want to fall in love with your job? If you answered “yes,” then read on! 

Many of our positions advertised offer a hybrid 3-2 work schedule (three days in the office, two days of teleworking) to accommodate the need for flexibility. 

Military service members and veterans with ranks from E3-E5, W1-W2, or O1-O3, plus appropriate equivalent combination of education and years of experience as outlined below will be considered for this opportunity. 

At this time, Dominion Energy cannot transfer or sponsor a work visa or employment authorization for this position. 

Job Summary 

This job posting is a part of the 2024 SHPE (Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers) National Convention.  Interviews will be conducted in-person at the conference in Anaheim, CA starting October 31st – November 2nd.  

The Difference You Will Make: 

Dominion Energy Virginia’s Electric Transmission (ET) departments are seeking motivated, engaged engineers to fill several vacancies within the organization. Electric Transmission is the organization responsible for the long-term planning, engineering, construction, and operations of the high voltage electric grid system operated from 69kV to 500kV. The grid is accountable for transmitting electricity from state of the art solar and wind facilities, integrating those technologies into the energy portfolio, and delivering the power to our many 2.7 million customers including the world's largest cluster of internet data centers. This is an exciting time to join our team as we are involved in industry-leading projects and initiatives such as interconnecting 5000 MW of solar generation in the next 5 years, the first utility-owned offshore wind project in United States federal waters off the Atlantic coast, virtual digital protection conversions, and the largest data center load growth in the world all as part of our plan to achieve net zero carbon emission goal by 2050. 

Job Summary Cont.

Electric Transmission is currently hiring. The departments involved will include, but are not limited to, the following groups: 

System Protection Standards: Develop, maintain, and support system-wide standards for transmission and distribution system protection, communications, metering, and control application. Provide expert technical support to other groups for the development and application of protection and control standard designs. The System Protection Standards team also evaluates and recommends new products, applications, and methods to maintain or improve safety, reliability, and efficiency. 

Transmission Engineering Standards: Develop engineering standard drawings and design requirements for transmission lines. Transmission lines equipment includes towers, engineered poles, conductor and static assemblies, and conductors. Transmission Engineering Standards team is also responsible for developing training for design engineers, equipment vendor selection, and engaging with industry forums and events (IEEE, SEE, CIGRE, EPRI, etc). 

Substation Engineering Standards: Develop engineering standard drawings and design requirements for substation equipment – substation equipment includes circuit breakers, instrument transformers, larger power transformers, and miscellaneous yard cabinets components. The Substation Engineering Standards team is also responsible for developing training for design engineers, standard material vendor selection and engaging with industry in forums, and events (IEEE, SEE, CIGRE, EPRI, etc.) 

Transmission Line Design: Provide detailed analysis and evaluation of high voltage electric transmission line facilities including conductor, hardware, insulators, and structures. Develop detailed designs, material requirements and construction specifications for new projects and modifications to existing facilities. 

Conceptual Design (Substation Protection & Control, and Physical Design): Develop project scope of work, conceptual protection and control design and estimates for ET and Electric Distribution Substations. Create and modify protection and control design documents and drawings for substation projects including relay functional drawings, logic diagrams, elementary diagrams, wiring diagrams, communications diagrams, relay panel arrangement drawings. Develop project estimates and make necessary updates to estimating database to improve accuracy and consistency. Facilitate smooth transition of the conceptual design to detail engineering/implementation team and represent the company at the state and county commissions applications/hearings and community open houses. 

Job Summary Cont.

Engineering Analytics & Modeling: Bridge the gap between real-world system data and provide consumable business intelligence to help steer the future of how DEV monitors and manages the grid. This team focuses on addressing a broad spectrum of transformational and innovative projects with a focus on solving problems through real measurements, data analytics, forecasting, and statistical modeling capabilities. A successful candidate will be able to:  

• Identify viable forecasting opportunities based on need, data availability, and time constraints posed by the length of the internship  
• Navigate and interrogate an array of available data sources to create transparent, explainable, and presentable models to the organization that can help further our views of future growth around load, solar, wind, and otherwise  
• Explore short and long-term electric load forecasts using verifiable econometrics, time-series analysis, statistical analysis, and other known methodologies.  
• Analyze and compare forecast performance with actual results, explains variances and suggests changes for future forecasting exercises  

Data Operations Engineer: An Engineer in the Engineering Analytics & Modeling Data Operations group is responsible for the collection and analysis of data by facilitating relationships with various departments across DEV and empowering users with innovative tools to help solve their everyday problems. A candidate would be automating processes, categorizing data, visualizing data in an easy-to-digest manner for both our SCADA and synchophasor data historians. An ideal candidate would have experience in Python and C#, be motivated to learn, and be self-driven. 

Substation Physical Design: Develop physical design engineering packages for Dominion’s ET and Electric Distribution Substations. Performs and/or reviews engineering calculations, analysis, research, to complete the physical design of electrical substations for new construction and upgrades. This includes preparing and reviewing substation drawings to be issued for construction, typically including: one-line diagrams, substation general arrangements, elevations and details, conduit and foundation plans, cable schedules, ground grid plans, and bill of materials. 

Strategic Studies Engineering: Perform stability, sensitivity analysis and power flow studies to ensure reliable operation of generation plants and to evaluate future load growth, future generation retirements, and future integration of renewable energy resources. 

ET Planning & Strategic Initiatives (PJM): Responsible for power flow simulations and developing solutions related to new generation being added to our system. This involves working within the PJM queue process and performing all necessary power flow and dynamic analysis to reliably inject this new generation onto our system. This team works closely with the CVOW project and DER projects as our generation portfolio changes to meet the net zero goals and to ensure during this change our system has the infrastructure to reliably serve our customers. 

ET Quality Assurance/Quality Controls: Responsible for evaluating the design and physical installation of substation and transmission line related equipment installed on the Bulk Electric System (BES). This team reviews design documentation and field inspector provided evidence to ensure accurate and proper ratings of equipment in appropriate databases and documentation. This directly translates to the safety, reliability, and accurate reporting of what our Bulk Electric System (BES) is capable of. 

Job Summary Cont.

System Modeling Engineering: Carry out data mining and data analytics on historical data to validate power system models and load forecasts and comfortable and familiar with creating, maintaining, and using databases and data in the development and maintenance of different models and data files for power flow studies. 

Operational Engineering Support & Reliability: Ensure asset management activities for Transmission & Substation Equipment meet requirements for maximization of reliability. This team also provides operational technical support during planned and emergent activities for the Electric Transmission. 

Operations Engineering (EMS Modeling/Network Application): Perform the modeling of DE’s transmission system including network topology, equipment ratings and parameter impedances as well as the maintenance of various operator displays. Coordinate with, and provide technical assistance to, various engineering, operations, and field teams to fully maintain the EMS model. This team also supports the development of tools to improve situational awareness in the operations control room. 

Operations Planning Engineering: Responsible for running transmission reliability studies within a 10-day window, performing N-1 contingency analysis, working on near and long-term outage coordination, and supporting real-time operations. This team also performs long-term planning studies up to 6 months ahead. 

SOC Services/Operations Support: Responsible for supporting operations with various tasks including: providing initial and continuing training to System Operators, maintenance of the map board training simulator, ensuring NERC compliance, procedure development, and development of the System Restoration Plan in the event of an eastern interconnect blackout. 

System Protection Automation & Analysis (SPAA): Ensures electric grid reliability by analyzing system events 24/7 using a combination of technical skills including data processing, software development, and engineering principles. Our strategically deployed monitoring equipment and in-house diagnostic tools enable teams across Dominion Energy to expedite restoration of service, direct fact-finding investigations, and facilitate NERC compliance activities. 

System Protection Engineering: Responsible for the design, modeling, and development of protective relay applications for the grid and substations. If a problem occurs on a transmission line our engineers design protective elements to automatically sectionalize this line and only this line in less than 50 milli-seconds. 

Substation Protection & Control Design: Develop protection and control design engineering packages for ET and Electric Distribution Substations. Create and modify protection and control design documents and drawings for substation projects including relay functional drawings, logic diagrams, elementary diagrams, wiring diagrams, communications diagrams, relay panel arrangement drawings, and bill of material. 

Substation Data Communications: Provide support to Substation upgrade projects, operational support to in service substation data communication equipment, and evaluation of emerging substation data communications technologies and equipment including Data Concentrators, I/O processors, and protocol converters. Provides SCADA programming. 

Required Knowledge, Skills, Abilities & Experience

The knowledge, skills, abilities and experience required for entry into this job include the following:

Engineer I: 0-2+ years of engineering experience (Note: A partial year of related work experience of 6 months or greater will be considered one year towards the qualifications; An advanced degree can count as one year experience) 

• Strong time management skills with the ability to independently plan and organize work assignments.  
• Oral and written communication skills, including technical writing. 
•  Ability to think analytically and solve complex problems. 
•  Basic knowledge of engineering concepts, fundamentals and theory; 
•  Equally effective with working independently or in a team environment.  Knowledge of basic system protection practices and relays 
•  Ability to interpret codes, regulations, and practices. 

Engineering Technical Specialist I:   0-2+ years of relevant experience and competencies in applicable discipline. (Note: A partial year of related work experience of 6 months or greater will be considered one year towards the qualifications; An advanced degree can count as one year experience) 

• Exposure to power systems modeling and simulation software preferred  
• Exposure to Computer Aided Design software preferred; 
• Knowledge of automation tools, databases, and software development is preferred. 
• Programming skills in one or more of the following languages: Python, Visual Basic, C#, etc. preferred  
• Basic understanding of the principles of transmission and/or distribution applications a plus 

Some positions will require operating Dominion Energy vehicles. Successful candidates for those positions will be required to have a valid Driver's License. 

 
REQUIRED ENGINEERING CRITERIA: 
 

For placement of a candidate in the Engineer job series, the following criteria must be met: 

• Possess a 4-year Engineering degree from an ABET accredited Engineering program based on the year that the Engineering program was accredited by ABET, or 
• Possess a 4-year Engineering degree from an institution outside of the U.S. which is accredited through the country's own Engineering accrediting body under the Washington Accord as a full signatory, and is a degree that was recognized by the country's accrediting body on or after the date that full signatory status was achieved, or 
• Possess a 4-year degree in Engineering (non-ABET accredited), Physics, Chemistry, Math or Engineering Technology and a post-graduate Engineering degree from an institution where the undergraduate degree in the same Engineering discipline is ABET-accredited based on the year the Engineering program was accredited by ABET, or
• Holds or has previously held a valid U.S. Professional Engineer license.

For placement of a candidate in the Engineering Technical Specialist job series, the following criteria must be met:

• 4-year Engineering Technology degree or 4-year degree in Engineering (not ABET-accredited); or
• 4-year degree in Physics, Math, Chemistry, Biology, Computer Engineering or other technical related discipline; or
• 4-year non-technical degree and post-graduate degree in Engineering Technology or Engineering (not ABET-accredited); or
• Equivalent combination of education and relevant experience may be accepted in lieu of preferred degree

Education Requirements

Required degree (equivalency not accepted in lieu of required degree):

Required: Bachelor of Science in Engineering

Preferred discipline(s): Electrical, Mechanical, Civil, or Computer Engineering

Note: Upcoming engineering graduates with a projected graduation date of no later than May 31, 2025, who also meet the engineering criteria will be considered. 

Licenses, Certifications, or Quals Description

For SOC Services/Operations Support Positions: Candidates must be able to obtain both PJM Transmission Operator and NERC Reliability Coordinator Certifications after beginning employment. 

Working Conditions

Other Working Conditions

Test Description