What's your job about?
I work in the Market Operations team at Transpower. Our team supports the operation of the wholesale electricity market, helps implement market initiatives and investigates how future market developments may impact system operations.
I work closely with colleagues on a range of daily tasks, including solving market infeasibilities, updating the market model, answering queries from market participants, compliance reporting and security of supply analysis. The electricity market structure is a really complex optimisation algorithm, which touches on some concepts I learned at university.
Most of the tasks I do are team orientated. I spend a lot of my time creating PowerBI dashboards to visualise data and use python to perform various analyses. One example is maintaining the python code, which is part of our annual security of supply assessment. This assessment provides a ten-year view of the balance between supply and demand in the New Zealand electricity system. I am also involved with the real-time pricing project at Transpower, working with very large datasets in python. The purpose of the real-time pricing project is to publish accurate and reliable spot prices for energy during or immediately after the end of each trading period. The current indicative spot prices are determined in the wholesale electricity market and are not finalised until at least two days after the trading period.
What's your background?
I attended Mount Albert Grammar School in Auckland. Maths was always my favourite and best subject at school but strangely enough, I never considered a career in maths. As a teenager, I thought that if I wanted a career in maths I would either have to become a schoolteacher or an engineer. Teaching did not appeal to me, and I didn’t understand the full spectrum of opportunities within engineering. It wasn’t until a few years after school, while I was studying optometry, that I learned through physics lecturers and friends what a degree in engineering science could lead to in terms of career opportunities.
I made the switch to engineering science and the first few weeks felt too good to be true. I was having so much fun using maths again but this time solving real-life problems. Through the various internships I did I began to realise how in-demand my skillset was. There are still a lot of people who don’t know what engineering science is, but every time I explain the degree, I find doors open. I was originally worried that Transpower would not consider me for the graduate programme because I did not complete a traditional engineering degree. Instead, Transpower presented me with a long list of options of placements where I could use my skills! To be honest, the hardest part of the graduate programme is choosing which area you want to work in because there are so many good opportunities.
Could someone with a different background do your job?
My team consists of people from a wide range of backgrounds. Although we all have the same job title of Market Analyst, we all have our unique specialisations. My background is in data science and as a result, I am more heavily involved in this area. If someone wanted to do my job they would definitely need a good understanding of data science. However, with the right aptitude, attitude and training, yes, someone from a different background could do my job. Transpower is great for providing opportunities and supporting people to move into different roles within the business when they want to develop new skills and career paths.
What's the coolest thing about your job?
One of the coolest things in my job is how quickly I see the results from the work I do. For example, the dashboards I make are sometimes published the very next week and used daily! One of my most favourite things about my job is the freedom to learn new skills and experiment with new ways of doing things. I have been able to learn PowerBI and have experimented with embedding python programming inside PowerBI.
I also love the team environment. Recently, when we converted from MatLab to python, we pulled a team together and had a hackathon to get it done. We were all in the office and programmed together for a week. It was a fun and rewarding experience.
What are the limitations of your job?
In general, my job is standard hours. However, over the Christmas holiday period, I may have to be on call for a few days. This is generally shared between the team. If we are required to work long hours this time will always be given back to us. The job requires learning a lot of technical jargon, which can be quite overwhelming at first! It’s just a matter of being patient and not being afraid to ask lots of questions – even the same question multiple times!
3 pieces of advice for your university-self?