Overview

The planned action areas of focus in this work plan are:

• Increase Ministry of Energy (MoE)’s capacity to deploy new technology pilots and integrate energy transition technologies into national energy planning (e.g. The Climate Change Mitigation Plan for the Energy Sector 2024, the National Decarbonization Plan, and the National Energy policy)

• Support regulatory changes to advance the adoption of energy transition technologies via changes to transmission cost recovery and/or ancillary services in the General Law and/or other normative of Electricity Services

• Support characterization and development of ancillary services from Variable Renewable Energies (VRE) and short-duration storage technologies, including modeling considerations and available procurement mechanisms for ancillary services.

• Provide technical advisory support for the development of the National Power Decarbonization Plan

The US-Chilean NZW partnership will focus on exchange of existing knowledge and best-practices, enabling a regulatory framework to successfully allow testing and deployment of innovative and new energy transformation technologies in a liberalized market as well as identification and evaluation of relevant ancillary services opportunities to be provided from VRE and short-duration storage technologies to maintain grid reliability in a power system with increasing amount of inverter-based resources. The work will include considerations and international examples to develop market-based compensation mechanisms for VRE and storage based ancillary services. The NZW team will coordinate with the work by the Global Power Sector Transformation in Chile and will discuss and share algorithms for calculation of necessary dynamic reserves (and associated ancillary services) as levels of variable renewable energy increase along the path to decarbonization. The team will also provide advisory support to the MoE in their development of the Chilean National Power Decarbonization Plan, which may include expertise and strategies for reconversion of phased-out coal-fired power plants.

Responsibilities

Duties Shall Generally Include:

• Review existing Chilean electricity industry regulation to identify relevant sections that may need to be revised to implement a pilot project regulatory framework.

• Develop a regulatory framework to enable testing and deployment of pilot or demonstration technologies that support the decarbonization plan. Regulatory framework should cover financing mechanisms to make pilot programs feasible through public-private partnerships or other means.

• Develop a supportive framework for R&D that leverages public-private partnerships, focusing on technological and procedural innovations within the power sector.

• Leverage experience from U.S. regional transmission organizations and independent system operators to characterize the ability of VRE and short-duration storage to provide an array of ancillary services. Identify key power electronics and digitalization technologies that can be leveraged in high renewable penetration systems to ensure security and reliability of grid operations.

• Define the types and number of services needed to maintain reliability of the power system in a system with high penetration of VRE and with large amounts of inverter-based resources (IBR) compared to traditional fossil-fuel based systems.

• Conduct activities such as sharing of performance data, simulation, testing and validation of technologies for Chile’s power system, and researcher and expert exchange and training (with possible links to Global Power Sector Transformation consortium work in this area).

• Once the ability of VRE and storage to provide ancillary services and the needs in highly decarbonized systems are established, this task will support the development of procurement mechanisms to ensure these services are supplied by the right technologies, in the right amounts, and at the right time and location.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

• BSc in Computer Science, Industrial Engineering

• Five years of experience with power system decarbonization plans from a modeling and regulatory/implementation perspective.

• General knowledge of mature and emergent clean electricity technologies

• General knowledge of electric industry regulation, market design and operation, and transmission infrastructure tariffs and revenue mechanisms.

Preferred Qualifications:

• PhD in Applied Economics, Energy

• Great interpersonal skills, including experience working with a variety of public and private stakeholders.

• Spanish language proficiency ideal, but not required.

Posted Salary Range

100 - 120 per hour

Benefits Information

Regular - The company offers a comprehensive benefits program, including medical, dental, vision, life insurance, 401(k) and a range of other voluntary benefits. Paid Time Off (PTO) is offered to regular full-time and part-time employees.

We are an equal opportunity employer and comply with all applicable federal, state, and local fair employment practices laws. All applicants will receive consideration for employment, without regard to race, color, religion, creed, national origin, gender or gender-identity, age, marital status, sexual orientation, veteran status, disability, pregnancy or parental status, or any other basis prohibited by law. If you are an individual with a disability, or have known limitations related to pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions, and would like to request a reasonable accommodation for any part of the employment process, please contact us at job-assist@akima.com or 571-353-7053 (information about job applications status is not available at this contact information).

Job: Life, Physical & Social Science

Travel: None

Organization: AIS - Akima Infrastructure Services

Clearance: Not Applicable

Work Type: Remote

Remote: Yes

ReqID: 2024-13239