Battery Storage Commissioning Engineer

ANS•Gilbert, AZ

4h•$80,000 - $100,000

About The Position

At ANS, we’re not just a consulting engineering firm—we’re a team of trailblazers shaping the future of engineering. Recognized as one of the Best Places to Work and Top 10 Hottest Engineering Firms in the US by Zweig Reports, and featured in Inc. 5000’s Top 250 for our staggering 1,748% growth, we’re proud of what we’ve built and where we're headed. We’re allergic to bureaucracy, thrive on innovation, and embrace data-driven decisions. If you love collaboration, creativity, and a fast-paced environment, we might just be your perfect match! Our team includes professionals licensed in over 20 states, with more than 70 years of collective experience. We pride ourselves on fostering a collaborative and supportive work environment that encourages growth and professional development. ANS has quickly become a major player in solar energy, battery storage, and broader renewable energy engineering space. The company offers a comprehensive suite of services, covering project development, engineering, procurement and construction, operations and maintenance, financing, and M&A. ANS aims to redefine the conventional relationship between engineers and clients, prioritizing agility, collaboration, and a deep understanding of client challenges. Specializing in design analysis, detailed engineering, and development support for solar and energy storage projects across the United States, the company, while historically focused on geotechnical and electrical engineering, is further diversifying into the entire value stream of Renewable Development. ANS has differentiated itself through a highly customer-centric approach to their services; this is evident in their high customer retention, ability to command some of the highest premiums in the market, and market penetration of ~15% despite being a relatively lean team. Overview: Commissioning is the intersection of design, construction, and manufacturing so an incredibly fun and challenging phase of the project. Utility scale battery projects require 4-8+ months of testing before safe and reliable operation on the grid. As a Commissioning Engineer at ANS, you will be leading and ensuring project design and construction is meeting all contractual, code and local requirements. Completion of this review and sign off ensures clear mechanical completion and the project is ready for energization and testing. To define success for the project we must evaluate the metrics from the owner and performance required for market operation. Operating within our Owners Engineering team, you will be leading the project through the commissioning process. Stakeholders include utilities, contractors, engineers, manufacturers, owners, and a variety of other parties. You will coordinate and lead commissioning activities, so the project achieves sync with the grid and is participating in markets. To ensure commissioning success the candidate must develop comprehensive test plans, keep organized and detailed notes, and address any challenges head on.

Requirements

Degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or equivalent experience.
1+ year of commissioning experience with an engineering degree, or 3+ years without.
Knowledge of relevant codes and standards for energy storage systems and inverters.
Strong understanding of plant controls and communication systems.
Experience in construction, commissioning, and analytical problem-solving.
Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal.
Commitment to safety protocols and industry standards.
Ability to delegate and collaborate effectively within a team.
Travel is required for this position, which must be ok with approximately 10 days out of every month during the commissioning period of the project. Example trips would be to visit the site to witness energization, a trip to troubleshoot reactive power testing, or travel to a vendor factory to observe acceptance testing.
Workflow consists of weekly internal team meetings to discuss project plans, professional development, training and industry issues related to safety, new technology, and standards. External team meetings are set up weekly to daily with the larger project team and are used to effectively manage the project to complete testing on schedule. Time spent in between internal and external meetings will be used to observe, witness and record the testing results and communicate that to the owner, EPC, utility and your internal team. Issues and RFI’s will come up and the owners engineer must respond immediately to items that can hold back testing to ensure the project stays on schedule.

Responsibilities

Communicate clearly with our client who is the Owner and operator of these projects. The main duty is to serve the owner’s best interest.
Ensure the equipment purchased meets specifications, the project is built to approved design, the project meets interconnection requirements to operate on the grid, and lastly the project meets or exceeds the quantities being sold from the project (energy, capacity and ancillary services).
Provide responses to close out the construction of the project by supporting the EPC and contractors to deem the project mechanically complete and substantial completion. This is completed through an onsite inspection and review and confirmation of all EPC testing.
Prioritize and lead the team in which testing comes first to ensure a safe and on time project.
Lead Reoccurring meetings with all stakeholders including the owner, EPC, vendors, engineers, utility and others. Bi-weekly meetings in the early phase of the project to daily POD meetings during the testing phase.
Complete key testing deliverables. Examples are project efficiency and capacity tests, Master test plan, and interconnection testing results including AVR, Reactive 4-Quad, PFR tests with appropriate plan, inputs, and results.
Provide detailed review of all projects Mechanical and substantial completion tests from the EPC or contractor. This will include reviewing Fall of potential grounding tests, VLF cable testing, Insulation resistive testing, Thermography, IV Curve test, Transformer FAT and onsite tests, and inspection of the construction milestones of Mechanical and Substantial completion. If results do not meet the owner’s technical spec or standards the OE team will recommend and observe remediation is complete.
Lead interconnection testing with the utility to witness, record and pass utility energization and sync testing. Examples are reactive four quad testing, automatic voltage regulation, power frequency regulation and not violating the interconnection limits on maximum capacity and ramp rate. Each project goes through dozens of tests. It is the job of the owners’ engineer to witness and provide guidance and support for passing each test. Typically, projects require multiple re-tests and rarely pass on your first few tries. So, a big part of the job is prioritizing time and resources to get appropriate testing, tuning and re-testing until all requirements are met. Example test plan is on the table below.
Manage different login portals for the site. VPN access to the site substation and HMI. Use your remote access to the data historian, HMI and telemetry to troubleshoot issues around data quality and compliance. Candidate must learn and eventually be proficient with the use of SCADA systems provided by the battery vendor, inverter vendor, O&M, SCADA vendor, and others. This is key to project commissioning and achieving commercial operations.