Description
The opportunity
This position is for a Planner in the Planning Models group within Resource Plan and Assessments. The Planning Models group is responsible for maintaining resource planning models and databases, and providing capacity and energy modeling and analysis, including capacity expansion assessments. This position will primarily focus on resource adequacy assessments and the maintenance of planning models databases.
What you'll do
The Planner is accountable to lead and/or participate in power system plan development and preparation in one of three integrated planning streams (Transmission, Resource or Conservation and Demand). The Planner is primarily responsible for conceiving, initiating, conducting, overseeing, and coordinating the necessary research and analysis involved in the development of integrated electricity system plans and supporting their implementation to advance and inform decision making at the IESO to ensure system reliability. This may include interactions with relevant parties and participation in the stakeholder engagement, regulatory, and procurement processes.
- Perform various aspects of power system plan development and preparation, with a focus on one of three specific streams (Transmission, Resource or Conservation and Demand). This includes identifying needs, developing and evaluating options, making recommendations, and establishing a rationale for a preferred solution; working with those responsible for other planning streams to balance all aspects into distinct integrated plans; developing and maintaining tools and processes to support the requirements of their stream ; developing formal business cases and/or evidence required to support regulatory or other approvals processes to implement elements of integrated plans and, as required, representing IESO, defending these in public and regulatory forums.
- Conduct and often lead complex power system and other technical, economic, scenario, and risk studies or assessments as part of the integrated power system planning process. This includes the development or use of complex analytical models and data in order to simulate and assess the behaviour and performance of the power system in the Ontario context. Conduct research on technologies, planning methods and practices, bringing relevant external trends and practices to benefit Ontario's planning. This requires each incumbent to work together with staff from the other streams to ensure well integrated plans. Specifically under the following streams:
- Resource & Economic Planning:
- Competent in planning system resource mix to meet the short and long term system adequacy while balancing economic and environmental attributes.
- Be able to develop, maintain and implement processes that apply the principles related to reliability, operability, environmental and economic requirements as they apply to electricity system resources in Ontario.
- Demonstrated ability to undertake assessments leading to practical proposals as part of the system planning process that reflects an appropriate balance of these principles so that electricity customer resource requirements are best met within the Ontario context. This includes conducting capacity, energy, emissions, financial and risk analysis with analytical tools including: the development of pro-forma economic/financial models; tools to emulate contract and market settlements and customer billing; industry tools such as GE MARS, UPLAN, PLEXOS etc.; and risk analysis software (e.g., @Risk). It requires the ability to produce adequate reliability, emission and costing information that result from plan alternatives.
- Understand and apply NERC, NPCC, and IESO standards and criteria in development and conducting of analysis
- Responsible for developing and maintaining updated assessments to inform system needs, acquisition processes and policy decisions .
- Responsible to work with Demand & Conservation Planning to understand the demand requirements and conservation opportunities; and with Transmission Planning to ensure the most effective deployment and utilization of resources for energy, operability and capacity
- Responsible to work with other groups (e.g. Markets, Operations) in the IESO to integrate information and insights to advance planning analysis.
- Demand & Conservation Planning:
- Competent in developing the bulk system and regional demand requirements for the province along with the Conservation opportunities that can affect that demand.
- Be able to develop, maintain and implement processes to assess and to identify potential scenarios and/or risks of the demand and conservation requirements and opportunities.
- Conduct analysis related to electricity demand and conservation and develop scenarios/projections of potential future demand.
- Responsible for maintaining an up to date Ontario Demand forecasts and forecasting models in all time-frames (short-term, medium-term, and long-term) as well as developing forecasts for regional planning along with the potential conservation opportunities. Support NERC/NPCC initiatives as required.
- Responsible to co-ordinate and work with other planning teams (Transmission Planning, Resource Planning, Operations Planning) and other internal stakeholders throughout the IESO to ensure understanding of the demand requirements and conservation opportunities so as to achieve the most effective deployment and utilization of resources for energy, operability and capacity.
- Resource & Economic Planning:
- Participate, and frequently act as team leader, in the development of integrated bulk and/or regional plans. This includes the following:
- Managing relations on the team as well as with internal and external industry partners / customers /stakeholders/ communities etc.
- Managing the planning and study work;
- Developing and getting buy-in on objectives, solutions and actions;
- Developing the economic and/or sustainability rationale for system investments in preparation for any required approvals including regulatory review; and,
- Preparing required supporting documentation.
- Support the implementation of integrated and/or regional plans, including defining the scope and timing of the solutions to be implemented and assisting on design and consultation matters. This includes the following streams:
- Resource & Economic Planning: Identify and assess options for addressing needs, including opportunities for distributed generation in specific regions; potential for improving transmission to achieve more optimal utilization of supply resources; provide support for acquisition mechanisms/processes such as procurements, markets or others; support related regulatory and/or community/based processes.
- Demand & Conservation Planning: Identify potential changes in regional demand and conservation opportunities; support regulatory and/or community/based processes.
- Serve as the planning spokesperson as appropriate when participating in stakeholder meetings, including officials from other jurisdictions, private sector companies, community engagements, public forums and consultations with government on proposed solutions and planning issues. This may include interacting with and advising community leaders, company executives, government officials and/or other agency staff and interfacing with media. This requires demonstrated competence in one or more of the following specific streams:
- Resource & Economic Planning: Enable the common understanding with stakeholders of resource characteristics along with the challenges and opportunities for sustainably balancing demand and supply at the bulk and regional/distributed level over the short and long term.
- Conservation & Demand Planning: Work with stakeholders, including private sector companies, communities and agencies, to evaluate bulk and regional electricity requirements and opportunities to incorporate as applicable into outlooks. Work with the Ministry of Energy and others to establish achievable program targets consistent with evolving codes and standards and other considerations.
- Participate and lead in the preparation of broader technical, economic and policy based reports, presentations, memos and submissions related to planning (i.e., projects, recent developments) for stakeholder reviews, Board of Directors' information, Ministry of Energy, regulatory proceedings, or other purposes.
- Support the IESO participation in external industry regulatory forums, both in Canada and the U.S (e.g. joint studies, standards, planning, and regulatory proceedings).
- Keep abreast of electricity industry developments, government, energy, environment, and economic policy and regulatory changes. Recommend participation approach, and propose strategies to address matters that are relevant to the functional area.
- Occasionally, provide mentoring, advice and guidance to more junior or less experienced staff. Provide quality control and review of work and products of junior staff (Planning Analyst) in these occasions.
- Strong knowledge of and experience programming in Python, VBA, R, Matlab, etc., including writing and testing code. Be able to write programming scripts to do analysis and/or modelling.
- Other duties or responsibilities as may be assigned.
Contact
Independent Electricity System Operator
1600-120 Adelaide Street West
Toronto
Ontario Canada
www.ieso.ca
From the same organization
9 Feb, 2025
