Dominic O'Grady

Power Systems Engineer

Electrical engineerEngineer

I worked for the National Grid System Operator of New Zealand for 20 years. I started of as a control room operator performing switching for outages, planning switching sequences and responding to faults. I then went on to become a operations planning engineer in the System Operator, performing powerflow analysis and identifying system constraints and outage requirements. I was the Engineering Subject matter expert on a project to create a tool to produce and apply automatic security constraints in the market system in planning and real-time, this was the first AC automatic security constraint tool in the world. I then spent the next 12 years managing engineering teams in the System Operator of New Zealand. This included the Operations Planning team and the Power Systems Engineering team. During my time with the Power Systems Team I managed the primary enigneering functions of the System Operator. These included Voltage Stability assessment and tools, Transient Stability assessment and tools, Oscillatory stability assessment and tools, Creation and maintenance of the Generator, AVR, Excitor and Power System Stabalizer models. I was responsible for delivering a 3 year ahead forecast of the Power System Security Risks to the National Grid as well as identifying and classifying all risks to the New Zealand Power System and how they are managed. After this I decided I wanted to be a bit more hands on and spent a few years working on shift as a System Coordinator in the System Operators National Coordination Centre. I really enjoyed this role, as I got to really learn the hands on skills of all the areas that I had managed and I was able to learn extremely rapidly and add value. I have recently decided to take a hiatus for health reasons, but want to explore remote working opportunities in my field, that utilise my expertise.