Senior Controls Engineer

Background of Company

Gore Street Capital (“Gore Street”) is a market sector leader in renewable energy investment with a mission to drive the market for renewable energy solutions and accelerate the transition to a more sustainable world. Gore Street is an expert renewable energy, infrastructure and private equity investment manager with vast international experience having identified the critical importance of battery storage in 2016.

Gore Street capitalises on opportunities to spend on robust businesses and assets contributing to the transition to a low-carbon, sustainable economy. The interdisciplinary team of seasoned investment leads, veteran experts in renewable infrastructure, skilled engineers and regulatory and legal experts work together to source, build and manage assets worldwide.

Gore Street are experts in:

• Sourcing disruptive technologies in the energy sector across a variety of jurisdictions.
• Developing renewable energy infrastructure projects and managing assets across the globe.
• Designing and managing strategic deals in a challenging policy environment.
• Forming strategic partnerships and working with multiple public and private sector stakeholders in the development of large complex projects.
• Increasing and optimising the use of renewable energy in order to cut the cost and expand the use of clean energy technologies globally.

Life at Gore Street

Gore Street is an equal opportunities employer and employs a diverse range of professionals from a variety of backgrounds and sectors. Gore Street believes that a diverse and inclusive workplace is critical in order to deliver on its mission.

Gore Street is committed to the wellbeing of its employees and aims to create an open, dynamic and inclusive environment that enables both personal and professional development. In order to facilitate this development, Gore Street offers the following:

• Competitive remuneration packages.
• Hybrid working (2 days per week in our London office).
• A comprehensive range of employee benefits, including, but not limited to, the following:
• Life Assurance.
• Health Insurance and a 24/7 Employee Assistance Programme.
• Electric vehicle scheme.
• Learning and development fund, providing up to £3,000 per year.
• Exercise fund.
• Cycle to Work Scheme.
• Enhanced maternity and paternity policies.
• IVF policy.
• 28 days annual leave.
• Social events and Company offsites.

For the avoidance of doubt, any benefits referred to in this job advert are for reference only and subject to eligibility and may be amended at any time.

Main purpose of job

Gore Street Capital is a fund manager for multiple energy storage funds, including Gore Street Energy Storage Fund (the first battery energy storage system (“BESS”) fund listed on the London Stock Exchange) which now owns 30 operational BESS projects spread across five grids, totalling over 750MW capacity. There is an exciting pipeline beyond this, with more projects planned across continental Europe and Japan.

Gore Street is building an in-house Analytics Platform: a holistic operational tool that integrates directly with our batteries to drive revenue improvements and cost reductions. A core pillar of this is the controls hardware workstream – an on-site edge controller that facilitates control of BESS assets and reads and submits asset data to the platform. This hardware closes the loop for the entire operational process, meaning Gore Street will have ownership of the full stack of services involved, a key strategic advantage in markets at home and abroad.

As the Senior Controls Engineer, you will design, build, test and commission this edge controller, taking it from requirements through to first-site commissioning and then into a documented, repeatable design that can be rolled out across the fleet. You will initially be the sole owner of this workstream, working closely with the wider technical and analytics teams, plant EMS providers and system operators. As the capability scales, you will set the technical standard that future engineers build against.

The ideal candidate will be a hands-on controls or systems engineer who is comfortable with end-to-end accountability, from real-time control logic through to on-site commissioning around live high-voltage equipment. You will have excellent organisational skills, an eye for detail, and genuine enthusiasm for a fast-paced and highly dynamic position where you build something from the ground up.

Responsibilities, duties and tasks

The primary responsibilities, duties and tasks of the role are as follows:

• Designing and building the edge device hardware with off-the-shelf components and writing controls software onto it. Bench-testing the equipment and commissioning onto real equipment in preparation for a quick, repeatable rollout across the fleet.
• Interpreting and working within existing EMS Modbus register maps and supporting continuous improvement in their specification with new and prospective projects.
• Designing and building real-time control logic (frequency droop / EFR / dynamic containment-style response) to IEC 61131-3 on an industrial controller, including setpoint rate-limiting and fail-safe behaviour on loss of EMS communications.
• Writing real (P) and reactive (Q) power setpoint control and reading back telemetry from the plant EMS in real time over Modbus TCP/IP.
• Running Factory Acceptance Testing and on-site commissioning, validating certified grid-frequency response and remote P and Q setpoint control against the plant EMS.
• Reviewing and tuning PQ write requests based on real measured performance of the BESS (for assets under direct control), to ensure prequalification into frequency response services with a reliable, firm response even on weak grids.
• Building the data pipeline: Modbus polling, local buffering so a wide-area network outage never loses data, and publishing to the cloud time-series store via MQTT.
• Hardening the solution across the OT/IT boundary – network segmentation, VPN/TLS to the cloud endpoint, and a resilient dual-path connection with wired Ethernet primary and 4G cellular automatic failover.

General duties

Day-to-day can vary greatly in this role, based on the needs of Gore Street’s projects at the time. You may be required to interface with contractors, EMS providers and system operators to get access to sites, agree register maps, plan testing and commissioning activities and procure hardware. You will also have opportunities to engage directly with the technical and commercial teams to support the assets’ monetisation strategies through improved control and data capture.

We expect this role to sit within the Technical team and initially focus wholly on activities to integrate data and controls with the proprietary Platform. As the services scale, management of personnel should be expected. Dependent on that scale moving beyond Gore Street’s managed funds, wider technical support for asset-related controls issues or analytical processes based on provided data may be required.

Occasional support for high-severity unplanned events outside of working hours may be required, as well as some travel to assets around Great Britain and, on occasion, Europe and North America for testing and commissioning.

Person Specification

Qualifications/Training

It is essential that the post holder has:

• Bachelor’s degree (or equivalent practical experience) in electrical, electronic, control or systems engineering, or a related discipline.

It is desirable that the post holder has:

• Formal training or certification in industrial control systems, functional safety, or OT cyber security.

Experience/Knowledge

It is essential that the post holder has:

• Demonstrable experience in real-time or industrial control engineering, including IEC 61131-3 programming on a PLC or industrial controller (experience with Bachmann M1 is a strong advantage).
• Hands-on experience integrating with plant EMS or RTU systems over Modbus TCP/IP, including reading register maps and writing power setpoints.
• Knowledge of Great Britain grid-code compliance and frequency-response services (droop / EFR / dynamic services), and the associated accuracy and timing requirements.
• Experience of the OT/IT boundary – network segmentation, VPN/TLS and resilient connectivity – and of edge-to-cloud data movement (MQTT, buffering, time-series / historian ingestion).
• A track record of delivering hardware or controls projects end-to-end and commissioning on live sites, working safely around live equipment.
• Experience and familiarity working within an ISO27001-compliant system for information security.

It is desirable that the post holder has:

• Experience in battery energy storage or grid-scale renewable assets, including NESO ancillary services, Operational Metering and D* reporting.
• Exposure to cloud data platforms such as Databricks.

Skills And Abilities

It is essential that the post holder has:

• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills with attention to detail.
• Proactive approach to managing matters and the ability to build momentum whilst bringing projects to a close.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to document designs clearly and manage a range of different stakeholders.
• The ability to work autonomously and take full ownership of workstreams.

Other Requirements:

• Proactive, flexible approach to managing matters.
• Excellent attention to detail.
• Reliable and accountable.
• Willingness to travel to sites and work around BESS projects in a prescribed, managed safe system of work.
• Desire to learn new skills to advance their career.