Job Satisfaction at Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO)

Throughout my rotations I did a range of responsibilities, ranging from BAU work, analytical work and power systems modelling

WA Market Operations is responsible for the day to day running of the WEM markets (settlements, participant queries, analysis and reporting). I take on a share of the team's responsibilities.

My current role is very forward focused which makes it very interesting. I need to think creatively and get to have insightful discussions with people from my company and external stakeholders.

I'm in a connection's team, so I assist large generators to get connected to the grid.

On the grad program I've covered a huge variety of different interesting work and yet have only scratched the surface of all of what AEMO does. I've been able to contribute content to three separate high profile public reports, I've been involved in stakeholder engagement, in the weeds in the engineering, knee deep in data exploration, putting together my own novel analysis of emerging issues, and so much more. I've learned everything I needed on the job, I have no background in the energy industry and I've picked it up along the way and fallen in love with it!

Engaging with internal SME's, external stakeholders and the market bodies as we all collectively work on regulatory change and designing the electricity and gas markets.

In my current rotation - Development and maintenance of Grid control software systems. - Power system tool development - Configuration of SCADA systems - Deployment of new SCADA systems - General server administration

On a day-to-day basis, our team ensures all our gas market systems are running correctly. In my role, I have specifically worked on emergency management for the east coast gas markets from involuntary curtailment in Victoria, to managing the contingency gas process in the Short Term Trading Markets in Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane.

I am involved in the testing of user applications which act as interfaces to the markets operated by AEMO.

I've been in two rotations and the day-to-day responsibilities have been vastly different. �Rotation 1: Markets I was involved in analysing and reporting on the National Electricity Market and various Gas markets, including daily and weekly reports, reports that analysed price volatility. I was also involved in other technical reports as well as some ad hoc project work. �Rotation 2: Stakeholder Relations My role is entirely project-based, so day-to-day responsibilities depend on the project I am working on. This role allows me to see how different business units within AEMO interact and also how AEMO interacts with external stakeholders.