r/Grid_Ops

Curious about this from an outside perspective — for those of you running rotating shifts at plants/control rooms, what do you actually do to stay safe on the drive home after a night shift? Coffee, napping in the lot first, calling someone to stay awake? Trying to understand what's real vs. what's just advice nobody follows.

U.S. power grid operator PJM, the nation's largest covering much of the East Coast and Midwest, on Friday ordered customers in emergency alert to curb their use, as it battled generator outages, overloaded transmission lines and surging air-conditioning demand during a prolonged heat wave.

PJM Interconnection, which manages the electricity system serving 67 million people in 13 states and the District of Columbia, has issued emergency energy alerts amid expectations that hot summer weather will drive up power demand.

The 13 states are Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.

PJM issued two alerts: a maximum generation alert and a load management alert.

Residential solar Inverters are required to have very strict standards to sense what is safe online… and disable themselves when the sensed grid power is wrong.

This is usually a very good thing as it keep the grid healthy, safe, etc.

Except when the grid operator decides to drop voltage, supposedly like ConEd did.

It would seem to me keeping as much solar online during sunny peak loads would help the grid, no?

Therefore, wouldn’t it be wiser to drop the highest consumers of power that have the least solar contribution, say big industry or data centers, in a rolling fashion (after asking for volunteers)? And/Or if you have exceptional awareness, drop areas under cloud cover (e.g. storms)

I’m an engineer, but not in ops. Does this make sense? Is it happening anywhere?

Was curious if this website is accurate. ACE seems to be holding up well for now but it’s currently about to be peak load at 6pm eastern.

PJM in a Maximum Generation Emergency Alert and Hot Weather Alert. High temperatures spiking cooling demand coinciding with solar ramp down in the evening leading to extremely high prices as conventional generators get picked up to meet the net load.

Regulation prices break $27,000/MW for some 5-minute intervals today. Batteries offering regulation today are making big money. Hopefully this incentivizes more battery buildout in PJM

A lot of the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic are headed for 5-7 straight days of 90+ weather, with a lot of areas forecasted for 95-100F. Heat indexes will be well over 100. This is going to be a serious test for the BES, as equipment typically begins to fail and overheat on the 3rd or 4th day of an event like this because load will be very high and there won't be opportunities for equipment to cool down overnight.

Good luck to all the operators, RCs/BAs, engineers, etc. Hopefully you get some quiet and easy Conservative Operations shifts, but I'm expecting some areas (Baltimore/Philadelphia I'm looking at you) to experience overloads and reliability issues. PJM will probably be issuing a number of Warnings and Actions this coming week, but hopefully there won't be any major EEAs.

I’ve been reading more about BESS from the grid operations side and wanted to ask people who have actually been around it.

Public discussion makes battery storage sound pretty simple. Charge when there’s excess power, discharge when the grid needs it. But I assume the real world version is a lot more complicated.

State of charge, dispatch timing, telemetry, inverter response, local congestion, outage coordination, safety procedures and who has control in real time all seem like they could become real issues.

For people working around grid operations, where do batteries create the most practical headaches? Is it mostly interconnection and controls, state of charge management, market dispatch, reliability coordination, fire safety, or just getting everyone to trust the data they’re seeing?

Pretty much what the title says.

Started this week, currently dispatching solo and training for control , I got about 14+ months of training but AMA

I made an interactive map of U.S. NERC-registered grid organizations: https://willschenk.github.io/nerc-grid-map/

It is a personal, open-source project. Please let me know if you notice wrong acronyms, bad labels, missing orgs, or anything that looks off.

Happy Sunday everyone, ever since working in the trade I have been leaning more towards becoming an Operator or Relay Technician (however operator sounds more appealing). I stay on the west coast in California and am wondering what can I do to better my chances? I’d love to get onto a utility in California but I am also very open to BPA or WAPA, but it seems they haven’t been posting any listings.

Background info on me:
I’m a navy veteran, I was an operations specialist. Nothing electrical but I was in the combat information center operating and tracking air & surface contacts with rotating shifts on a 24 hour schedule. The job seems similar environment wise so I think it would be a perfect fit.
I am about to graduate with an A.A.S. In Electric Power Technology from Bismarck State College, have my OSHA 10 ET&D, First Aid & CPR, and Class A CDL. I know the next thing to get would be my NERC cert from power4vets and I am about to enroll but is there anything else I can do? I recently also applied to City of Burbank Power System Operator Trainee position and am awaiting results.

Any guidance or insight on positions would be greatly appreciated thank you!

After reading through the event report by WECC I was wondering what you guys all thought about it.

The significance of poor modeling and unreliable state estimator results stuck out to me, does anyone else have that same issue at their company?

Does anyone have any potentially helpful advice or insight on interview questions?

I go next Thursday for the interview, I've already passed the SO/PD test.

A little background on me, ive been an automotive technician since 2017 and pay wise I've been informed I've reached my cap essentially. I have no background in this field or college degree. Im very good with wiring, schematics, diagnostics on 12v, 24v, and 48v systems. I also hold several high voltage EV certifications. Is there anything I should be prepped for in this interview?

I have an operator role with a green energy client up in Montana. Comp details in the title, they’ll relocate you too. Operates on a Dupont schedule, and they’ll move quickly. Feel free to DM me if you’d like to check out more details!

You’ll need a NERC cert and either a 4 year degree or a NERC cert and a few years of experience to be considered.

Let me first say I'm going through HSI and their initial operator program, I wont lie some of the material is hard to digest. Any studying tips, especially from people coming from low/no prior background that broke into the field. Any advice would be appreciated thanks

Have an interview for the Salt Lake City position as a ROCC operator. Any insight on pay and benefits???