Job Description

As a Sr. Performance Engineer, you will work within the Asset Management team, which is responsible for the technical management of a growing portfolio of distributed generation and utility-scale projects located across the United States. As a senior performance engineer in the renewable industry, you will be responsible for analyzing and interpreting data related to power plant performance, modeling, and prediction. Your work will help inform strategic decision-making and improve operational efficiency in the industry. You will collaborate closely with engineers, O&M teams, project managers, and business stakeholders to identify opportunities for data-driven insights and solutions.

Responsibilities:

• Collect, clean, and analyze large data sets related to power plant performance, modeling, and prediction.
• Develop predictive models and algorithms to forecast power plant performance and troubleshoot underperforming PV systems, identify potential component failures and modeling issues, and recommend corrective actions to meet guaranteed capacity and energy production targets.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to develop and implement data-driven solutions that improve operational efficiency and reduce costs.
• Design, implement and maintain APIs to enable easy access to data from various sources such as Data Acquisition System (DAS), equipment manufacturers (e.g. inverter, transformers), National Weather Services, third party weather data providers, etc.
• Experience developing and executing Extract, Transform, Load processes with SQL databases.
• Lead in the development of programming code to automate internal and external reporting requirements.
• Work with stakeholders to identify their requirements for data analysis, model development, and performance optimization, and work with the team to deliver solutions that meet those requirements.
• Communicate findings and recommendations to technical and non-technical stakeholders in a clear and concise manner.

Requirements:

• Master’s degree in a relevant field, such as computer science, data science, math, physics, and/or engineering such as electrical and 5 years of combined experienced in performance engineering and data scientist in a similar role.
• Domain expertise in the solar energy industry.
• Proficiency in Python, R, SQL, and/or other programming skills
• Proficiency in the use of business intelligence tools and other analytical tools (e.g. PowerBI, Tableau, Plotly, Pandas, NumPy, Matplotlib)
• Proficiency in MS Excel (inc. VBA and/or macros).
• Proficiency with photovoltaic performance modeling tools such as PVsyst, PVLIB Python, NREL SAM and other PV software and models.
• Proficiency and demonstrated experience working with real-world data in all phases of the data science life cycle—data compilation, data exploration, feature selection and engineering, training, testing and communication of results.
• Knowledge of solar monitoring platforms (AlsoEnergy, GPM, Powerfactors, etc.)
• Experience conducting performance evaluation of PV performance using ASTM and IEC.