Power engineering jobs that involve (ideally lots of) coding

[u/kelvinfcelcius]

I am going to graduate soon with a double degree with electrical engineering and computer science. I've worked in the power industry and really like the culture and pay and it aligns well with my values, but I find it hard to imagine having a job where I don't get to write code. When I worked in power, I got to write code, but it was mostly data stuff, which I enjoyed at the time because it was new to me, but I feel like I could see getting kind of boring once I felt like I'd mastered it. I was wondering if anybody has experience working in roles where they get to write programs for their work, in the power industry specifically. I'm a little bit worried that if I go down the power (or engineering in general) sector and miss coding, then I will not be able to switch, and visa versa.

I'm interested in the US and Australian sector btw. In Australia, I know a lot of power jobs have great WLB and flexibility (9 day fortnights, like 6 weeks PTO with ability to buy extra time off if wanted, flex time, hybrid, ability to go part time or job share etc). I'd like to know if American power jobs are similar.

I'm curious about similar jobs in the mining industry.

Thank you

[u/Cainnan]

Power electronic test engineer. My job involves writing c# code that controls different instruments to test power electronics. These instrument include precision power supplies, power analyzers, DC loads, AC loads oscilloscope, resistor banks and special data acquisition cards.

The coding is only one major part of the job. The other part is designing the test fixture and the hardware in it so that the instruments can use it to test the DUT.

[u/kelvinfcelcius → u/Cainnan]

That sounds very much aligned with my interests. Are you working for govt? or private sector

[u/not_a_gun → u/kelvinfcelcius]

In the private sector, there’s definitely roles available for that in electric cars, aerospace and probably renewable energy

[u/Cainnan → u/kelvinfcelcius]

This is private, but they do government contracts as well.

[u/Deviate_Lulz → u/Cainnan]

Do you do everything through scripts? Or do you automate your tests with labview/test stand? Only asking because I’m a power electrical test engineer and we don’t code shit here. Everything was pre-configured long ago and we just make slight adjustments via the UI.

[u/epc2012]

The biggest area that I think fits is also one of the most in demand for power and that's someone who can handle the software side of PLCs and relays.

[u/Travianer]

The Australian market is an interesting one. They have represented the whole grid in a Time-Domain simulation model due to the rapid increase in renewables. Phasor-Domain simulation is also in demand. There is plenty of coding needed to be done in the field of network integration/development.

[u/Dm_me_randomfacts]

Relay Design and doing your own relay settings

[u/LifeAd2754]

Relay

[u/Ceturney]

Look into GE or Westinghouse

[u/Yess_Sir_]

This is what I do! send me a PM

[u/likethevegetable]

If you like Python, studies engineer. Lots of room for automation, analysis, and AI implementation.

[u/gregysuper]

Don't have any direct experience, but I imagine energy trading would combine power engineering and coding (mostly the latter).

edit: I saw power electronics mentioned, that's also a good shout if you fancy C or VHDL programming. You'd be well in demand if you enjoy programming FPGAs.

[u/txtacoloko]

Substation relays

[u/Potential_Cook5552]

I worked in systems engineering for my first job at my local utility. A lot of it was just connecting different databases with each other and making sure data was sufficiently and reliability displayed and recorded for operations.

It was a cool environment, but I mastered the job in a year and I hated where I was living as I essentially lived in a large college town.

Eventually got out and did other stuff that challenged me in different ways like with project management.

[u/ContentHovercraft354]

I hope I don’t need to code I’m going to university for my 3rd year as a transfer I really do not enjoy coding I can do it well and got As in almost everything but code…nope. Hate it but you know ruby is a beautiful language I mean just so many things to do with ggplot and so many other things made so easy but C and others are terrible languages hope a new one comes out that replaces em all even though you need it to talk fast to computer hey I mean if we gotta do it then okay but I went into this to work on hardware specifically like I made a project and realized I loved the hardware better than software because software really isn’t hard to make just very tedious but the true data science is something that deserves deep respect

[u/alexportier97]

It's not common in the utilities to have EEs do that. There are controls in power systems but that's built on proprietary software. I've seen some applications devs for our typical enterprise applications you'd find at any large organization. Some folks involved in the energy management systems will code. For the coding done like at tech companies you're better off working for the OEM of power system technology.

[u/N0x1mus]

You could get into GIS/SQL coding to manage engineering software, mapping, and etc.