DEV Immersive Career Experience - Electric Transmission Engineer I

Job Summary

This job posting is a part of the DEVICE program (Dominion Energy Virginia Immersive Career Experience) - a three-day, in-person job shadowing experience in Richmond, VA starting August 12, 2024, through August 14, 2024. 

Note: Lodging, food, and travel (if applicable) will be provided to the chosen participants.

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.

Electric Transmission is hiring, with the departments participating in the shadowing experience to include, but not limited to the following groups:

A Typical Day as an Electric Transmission Engineer: 

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.

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.

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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.

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. 

Conceptual Transmission Line Design: Provides conceptual analysis, scoping, design and estimates for high voltage transmission line projects including building new lines, re-building and modifying existing facilities, fiber installations, and customer relocations.

Substation and Transmission Engineering Standards: Develop engineering standard drawings and design requirements for substation equipment and transmission lines – substation equipment includes circuit breakers, instrument transformers, larger power transformers, and miscellaneous yard cabinets components.  The Substation and Transmission Engineering Standards team is also responsible for developing training for design engineers and partner groups in Electric Transmission and Electric Distribution, as well as engaging with industry in forums, and events (IEEE, SEE, CIGRE, etc.)

Overhead & Underground Transmission Line Design: The team's primary responsibility is the design, development, and implementation of high voltage (69kV-500kV) overhead and underground transmission lines throughout DEV.  The team is responsible for managing various components of complex projects and delegating engineering tasks to outside engineering firms in order to meet project cost and schedule requirements. The team also devises new approaches to problems encountered and develops engineering solutions ensuring compliance with design criteria and standards.

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System Protection Field Operations: Perform maintenance, installation, and corrective action activities on system protection devices, control circuits, metering, and communication equipment within Dominion's Transmission, Distribution, and Generation substations. The majority of work assignments are outside the office.

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.

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.
 

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. 

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.

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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.

Required Knowledge, Skills, Abilities & Experience

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.
• Strong 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.

Preferred Knowledge, Skills, Abilities and 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.

Education Requirements

Required Education: 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.

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.

Certifications

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 Information

These and other duties as assigned constitute essential functions of the job.

We offer excellent plans and programs for employees. Employees are rewarded with a competitive salary and comprehensive benefits package which may include: health benefits with coverage for families and domestic partners, vacation, retirement plans, paid holidays, tuition reimbursement, and much more. To learn more about our benefits, click here dombenefits.com.
Dominion Energy is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to a diverse workforce. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to their protected veteran or disabled status.
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