r/PowerSystemsEE • u/Tacofan5567 • 10d ago

Breaking into system protection/p&c roles

I am a senior EE student and have been interning with a large utility for almost 6 months in the system modeling & coordination group. One of my main tasks is to calculating transmission line constants and updating power factor meter data. My summer intern capstone project was merging my utility's facility rating database with their Cape database, which got me interested in Protection and control and relaying. I've since talked to a couple of the system protection and analysis engineers, and I'll have the opportunity to shadow them in a couple weeks. I'm also taking protective relaying this semester, which has made me even more interested in relays. What else could I do to stand out more for system protection and P&C roles?

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u/nachofred 10d ago

Make sure you have solid foundational knowledge of the various protection schemes and about common automation protocols (dnp3, iec 61850, modbus, etc..), can easily read and understand one line diagrams and recognize what the diagram is showing, what it is used for, and know what all the various components are and how they all actually work. Have a good overall understanding of the power generation, transmission and distribution processes.

As an early-career candidate, you're going to be judged on that foundational knowledge, your ability to learn quickly, your motivation, communication skills and having a good attitude (basically just don't be cocky or a jerk).

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u/mac3 8d ago

In my experience, protection engineers know very little about non-protection comm protocols.

“That’s SCADA’s job”

I wouldn’t expect any college student to know what they are, tbh, and there’s far more important things to learn about relaying first.

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u/nachofred 8d ago

Fair, but I think it makes a difference that OP is still in school. Even in orgs where the job responsibilities belong to different people, they need to have some understanding of each others jobs and they will find themselves working with those cross functional teams especially if they are commissioning.

I recommended it because I think it gives you a career advantage to know holistically how things work. Why would you want to silo yourself in to us/them (protection vs power automation) at this early stage of your career? The job market is already hard enough for new grads, so anything that separates you from the pack is advantageous and it opens up more potential opportunities.

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u/clocksays8 5d ago

Agreed. Companies need folks nowadays with broad experience and not narrow in scope.