Battery Storage Commissioning Engineer

Communicate clearly with our client who is the Owner and operator of these projects. The main duty is to serve the owner’s best interest. Ensure the equipment purchased meets specifications, the project is built to approved design, the project meets interconnection requirements to operate on the grid, and lastly the project meets or exceeds the quantities being sold from the project (energy, capacity and ancillary services).

Provide responses to close out the construction of the project by supporting the EPC and contractors to deem the project mechanically complete and substantial completion. This is completed through an onsite inspection and review and confirmation of all EPC testing.

Prioritize and lead the team in which testing comes first to ensure a safe and on time project.

Lead Reoccurring meetings with all stakeholders including the owner, EPC, vendors, engineers, utility and others. Bi-weekly meetings in the early phase of the project to daily POD meetings during the testing phase.

Complete key testing deliverables. Examples are project efficiency and capacity tests, Master test plan, and interconnection testing results including AVR, Reactive 4-Quad, PFR tests with appropriate plan, inputs, and results.

Provide detailed review of all projects Mechanical and substantial completion tests from the EPC or contractor. This will include reviewing Fall of potential grounding tests, VLF cable testing, Insulation resistive testing, Thermography, IV Curve test, Transformer FAT and onsite tests, and inspection of the construction milestones of Mechanical and Substantial completion. If results do not meet the owner’s technical spec or standards the OE team will recommend and observe remediation is complete.

Lead interconnection testing with the utility to witness, record and pass utility energization and sync testing. Examples are reactive four quad testing, automatic voltage regulation, power frequency regulation and not violating the interconnection limits on maximum capacity and ramp rate.

Each project goes through dozens of tests. It is the job of the owners’ engineer to witness and provide guidance and support for passing each test. Typically, projects require multiple re-tests and rarely pass on your first few tries. So, a big part of the job is prioritizing time and resources to get appropriate testing, tuning and re-testing until all requirements are met. Example test plan is on the table below.

Travel is required for this position, which must be ok with approximately 10 days out of every month during the commissioning period of the project. Example trips would be to visit the site to witness energization, a trip to troubleshoot reactive power testing, or travel to a vendor factory to observe acceptance testing.

Workflow consists of weekly internal team meetings to discuss project plans, professional development, training and industry issues related to safety, new technology, and standards. External team meetings are set up weekly to daily with the larger project team and are used to effectively manage the project to complete testing on schedule. Time spent in between internal and external meetings will be used to observe, witness and record the testing results and communicate that to the owner, EPC, utility and your internal team. Issues and RFI’s will come up and the owners engineer must respond immediately to items that can hold back testing to ensure the project stays on schedule.

Manage different login portals for the site. VPN access to the site substation and HMI. Use your remote access to the data historian, HMI and telemetry to troubleshoot issues around data quality and compliance. Candidate must learn and eventually be proficient with the use of SCADA systems provided by the battery vendor, inverter vendor, O&M, SCADA vendor, and others. This is key to project commissioning and achieving commercial operations.