Power Grid Analyst (Data Centres and Industrials)

NextGenEnergyJobs; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job summary

Octopus is a rapidly growing, global energy business seeking a skilled grid modeller to map, analyse and model grids for strategic capex decisions. You will run techno-economic and electrical power flow modelling to define optimal resource mixes against objectives such as grid constraints, peak profile, LOLE and LCOE.

You will assess solutions for grid quality and stability, with emphasis on non-wire options like flexibility and BESS.

Qualifications

• Strong background in energy systems or electrical engineering with power-system modelling.
• Advanced power flow modelling expertise with the listed tools and non-linear optimisation.
• Experience with DERs, MV/HV grids and utility-scale projects.
• Excellent communication and ability to present to non-technical audiences.

Responsibilities

• Grid assessment: map, analyze and model grids to inform capex strategy.
• Techno-economic modelling to define resource mix against objectives (grid constraints, LOLE, LCOE).
• Assess solutions for grid quality and stability, focusing on non-wire options (flexibility and BESS).
• Review and design grid investment plans or IRPs for technical sign-off.
• Interconnection: analyze grid constraints and provide insights on connection queues.
• Interest in expanding into commercial modelling.

Skills

Grid modelling

Data analysis

Communication

Collaboration

Curiosity

Education

Electrical engineering or power systems degree

Tools

PSCAD

PSSE

PowerFactory

PandaPower

Plexos

Python

Databricks

Kubernetes

Terraform

Streamlit

Airflow

CircleCI

Parquet

Delta Lake

S3

Spark

DBT

SparkSQL

Job description

Octopus is a rapidly growing, global energy business.

Responsibilities

• Grid assessment: Map, analyze and model grids across various markets. Analyze and provide insights to inform capex strategy, prioritising non-wire solutions.
• Techno-economic and electrical power flow modeling to define optimal mix of resources against specific objectives (grid constraints, peak profile, LOLE, LCOE etc.)
• Technical assessment of solutions for grid quality and stability issues, with a focus on non-wire solutions (flexibility and BESS).
• Grid development plans: support the team in reviewing and designing grid investment plans or Integrated Resource Plans, for technical sign-off.
• Interconnection: Analyse grid constraints and provide insights on grid connection queues.
• Interest in expanding into commercial modelling

Requirements

• Strong background in energy systems. Or an educational background in electrical engineering or power system modelling
• Advanced power flow modelling expertise (PSCAD, PSSE, PowerFactory, PandaPower) and knowledge of non-linear optimisation. Ability to run or develop deterministic physics based grid modelling tools.
• Knowledge of linear, economic modelling, e.g. plexos, is a plus.
• Experience with DERs, medium and high voltage grids and utility-scale energy projects.
• Deep understanding of energy economics and grid infrastructure principles, enjoys generating insights from large and complex sets of energy data and metrics.
• Enjoys starting things from scratch, pro-actively look (and find) data, and iterating quickly
• Natural curiosity and passion for all things grid and the energy transition
• Inquisitive and seek to really understand the question – on top of your technical skills you seek to understand the true requirements of a problem and approach the answers with a business and user mindset.
• Excellent technical communicator – you are not only a talented individual contributor but you also enjoy and excel at presenting your results to a non‑technical audience as a clear narrative.
• Favour simplicity – you prefer to use simple, reliable tools over complex frameworks or approaches.
• Collaborative – you’ll be taking inputs from and providing outputs to many teams around the group.
• Proactive – much of work will be unguided as you develop the tools and capabilities to answer businesses questions.
• Python as our main programming language.
• Databricks as our data lake platform.
• Kubernetes for data services and task orchestration.
• Terraform for infrastructure.
• Streamlit for data applications.
• Airflow purely for job scheduling and tracking.
• Circle CI for continuous deployment.
• Parquet and Delta file formats on S3 for data lake storage.
• Spark for data processing.
• DBT for data modelling.
• SparkSQL for analytics.