Director of System Protection

General Summary of Job Responsibilities

The Director of System Protection is responsible for the electrical protective relaying schemes of the entire Consumers Energy electric system including generation, High Voltage Distribution (HVD), Low Voltage Distribution (LVD) and fault analysis, as well as HVD communications infrastructure and SCADA configuration. Generation protection includes those devices within the generating stations including the main generator, main step-up transformer and associated station power systems. HVD System Protection includes all the protection schemes associated with the 138kV and 46kV CE owned electrical system. LVD System Protection includes the protection schemes associated with the low voltage CE distribution system (below 25kV). The Fault Analysis team monitors the operational performance of the protection schemes and helps locate faults on the power system to assist in timely customer outage restoration, as well as troubleshoot and assess protection scheme issues. The Technology Solutions team is responsible for communications to HVD assets as well as the configuration of RTUs.  Responsibility for the interconnection protection of distributed energy resources (DERs) is also included.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Establish and monitor systems and procedures for measuring progress and for problem-solving
• Coordinate the preparation of reports required by senior leadership or regulatory agencies
• Develop budgets, schedules, and performance standards for engineering programs
• Evaluate and select vendors for engineering supplies and equipment. Negotiate research contracts and agreements with outside contractors
• Review project proposals and plans to determine time frame, funding limitations, procedures for accomplishing project, staffing requirements, and allotment of available resources to various phases of project. Oversee all engineering projects from conception to completion, ensuring adherence to budget, schedule, and quality standards
• Develop the direction of activities for department projects to ensure projects progress on schedule and within prescribed budget
• Confer with project personnel to outline work plan and to assign duties, responsibilities, and scope of authority
• Investigate complaints about engineering products or services and take corrective action
• Monitor project progress and make necessary adjustments to ensure timely completion
• Other duties as assigned or may be necessary

Additional Duties and Responsibilities

• Direct a highly specialized team of engineers that provides protection and SCADA engineering support to CE electrical projects through the creation of relay recommendations and relay settings.
• Support the ongoing operation and performance of electrical protection systems on HVD, LVD & generation through fault analysis, problem solving and statistical analysis.
• Oversight of the group’s NERC compliance for all applicable PRC (Protection and Control) standards.
• Responsibility for the scheduling and management of the obsolete relay replacement capital budget and communications & RTU replacements.
• Responsibility for the O&M budget for routine HVD relay maintenance, demand failures and project relay setting changes.
• Coordinate team response to emergent outages, system reconfigurations and fault analysis to support prompt customer outage restoration by monitoring System Control pages.
• Represent CE system protection interests in meetings with customers, METC/ITC, contractors, EFL, MPSC, NERC and upper management.
• Provide guidance in evaluating the latest technology and applications of protective schemes and SCADA systems, developing specifications, and functionally design protection scheme standards.

Knowledge/Skills/Abilities

• Excellent problem-solving, analytical, and decision-making skills
• Outstanding verbal and written communication skills
• Managing one's own time and the time of others
• Ability to plan, implement, and evaluate programs
• Ability to effective manage a project
• Strong understanding of quality assurance processes and best practices
• Working knowledge of agile development methodology
• Expertise working with multiple engineering disciplines
• Detailed knowledge and familiarity with electric utility protection systems and operations.
• Ability to read, understand and navigate engineering drawings such as one-line diagrams, detailed AC and DC schematic control diagrams.
• Ability to provide technical direction on the operation of the major components in an electric system including symmetrical components, electrical short circuit modeling, and protective relay performance and characteristics.
• Ability to use and promote the use of new technology and innovation, specialized computer software, macros and program development to manage the large protection system databases necessary to provide detailed documentation of protection system recommendations, settings and maintenance.

Education/Experience

• Bachelor's Degree in Engineering from an ABET accredited program with ten (10) or more years of experience in project management in regulatory environment.  
  • [OR] Bachelor's Degree in Engineering from a non-ABET accredited program plus a Professional Engineering license with ten (10) or more years of experience in project management in regulatory environment.