Relay Technician

Key Responsibilities

• Champions a corporate culture emphasizing transparency, integrity, safety, environmental responsibility, employee development, diversity and inclusion, customer service, and operational excellence.
• Maintains, diagnoses, and corrects problems to all protective relays, substations, control circuits, supervisory controls, and battery systems in distribution, transmission and generation facilities.
• Constructs, installs and maintains auto-transfer schemes in distribution system.
• Performs the installation, wiring and checkout of all protective relaying and associated control systems in transmission, distribution and generation stations.
• Performs periodic testing and functional operation of protection systems in accordance with North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) mandate.
• Maintains relay carrier equipment such as wavetraps and line tuners.
• Diagnoses and corrects problems in equipment such as power circuit breakers, transformers, and fault/disturbance recorders in a manner that is not disruptive to the regional power grid.
• Installs and maintains battery systems and chargers in transmission substations.
• Installs, maintains, and troubleshoots both Programmable Logic Controller (PLC)-based and solid state transfer switches and sectionalizing switch automatic controls as well as the associated motor operators and trains field personnel in their proper operation and testing.
• Maintains SAP Equipment Maintenance database used for keeping accurate and concise historical records of transmission equipment.
• Develops relay testing programs, Distribution Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (DSCADA) programs, carrier system programs, transmission and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) programs, and PLCs which controls Capacitor Banks, Load Tap Changers (LTCs), and Breaker reclosing.
• Performs testing on SCADA Systems, carrier systems, CCVTs, Transformers, Current Transformers (CTs), PTs, wave traps, Automatic Transfer Switch (ATS) schemes, power plant SCADA and generation relaying, battery sets, capacitor banks and controls, PLCs, and regulators.
• Serves as a member of scheduled call-out to ensure timely restoration of service.
• Connects test apparatus to troubled circuit.
• Analyzes test results and interprets electrical diagrams to locate defective relay.
• Opens and closes switches to isolate defective relay and makes adjustments or removes relay for repair.
• Tests circuit and equipment to evaluate such factors as insulation quality, which affect function of relays.
• Analyzes test data to determine performance characteristics of relays and effect of system modifications on relay performance.
• Affords assistance to entry-level staff, leveraging technical experience to help onboard them and support milestone achievement.
• Supervises contractors in construction of substations and assists engineering with design.
• Provides communication to supervisor to provide status updates on work and identify risks in delivery or resourcing needs.
• Operates as the experienced technical staff member amongst the Relay Technicians to execute through defined objectives, milestones and priorities in the short-term according to established plans and supervisor guidance.
• Uses existing procedures to solve routine or standard problems, analyzes information and standard practices to make judgments.

Qualifications

• High School Diploma or equivalent.
• Two years vocational or technical training in Electrical Technology or related field preferred.
• 3-5+ years of related experience.
• Step progression levels based on skill proficiency and scope of job.
• Strong business acumen pertaining to the Utility industry.
• Strong knowledge of leading practices in transmission relay.
• Strong planning and project management skills.
• Willingness and ability to learn new technologies on the job.
• Certified forklift operator required within 6 months of employment.