This story is the fourth in a series spotlighting ISO New England employees who helped complete a major, multi-year project that required expertise from across the organization.

Sixteen years ago, Dave Hussey’s internship at ISO New England led to his first full-time job. Today, as a principal engineer in the Operations Technical Studies department, he continues his work at the ISO because of the company culture and the projects his team takes on.

“By the time a project gets to us, it means it’s real,” Hussey said. “It’s going to happen. We know it has real impact to day-to-day operations, and that is a positive, motivating factor for us.”

Hussey’s team studies new projects, such as transmission upgrades or new solar and wind farms, that are ready to connect to New England’s power grid. They perform detailed engineering analyses to fully understand the effects a new project might have on operating the regional system. The end goal for their studies is to help system operators keep the grid stable.

One of the largest study efforts Hussey and colleagues have tackled was New England Clean Energy Connect (NECEC). A 145-mile transmission line, NECEC brings electricity from Canadian hydro plants to the New England power grid. The project grew out of renewable energy legislation passed in Massachusetts in 2016. It was built and will be maintained by a subsidiary of Avangrid. ISO New England has operational control over the line in its role as a regional transmission organization.

Studying NECEC’s impact on grid operations was an all-hands-on-deck effort for Hussey’s study team, with close to 10 engineers involved. Hussey said previous projects built up the experience and confidence they needed to get the job done. “This would not have been a thing if not for the very capable engineers that we have in our group,” said Hussey. “They stepped up and did some awesome work for us.”

For Abigail Young, an associate engineer and the team’s newest member, NECEC was an introduction to a large system study. It was clear to her that projects of this scale don’t happen frequently.

“Being added to this study felt like an opportunity for me to demonstrate the knowledge and skills that I had been working on throughout my time at the ISO,” said Young. “NECEC was a whole different beast due to its size, scope of study, and type of area in which it’s connected.”

The study process for NECEC was huge. Engineers used computer simulations, studying numerous conditions and tweaking inputs to see how the power system would behave. Every new behavior they examined had a chance of impacting prior system operating guidelines they had established, creating an expansive ripple effect.

A year and a half later, the NECEC project is behind them. The guides have been created, control room crews have been trained, new equipment completed several weeks of commissioning testing, and NECEC is sending power to New England’s grid. 

Young said it felt good to work with a talented team.

“Honestly, I don’t think I could count how many times where a majority of the NECEC team was piled into someone’s cube, looking over and discussing dynamics results,” said Young. “To me, the teamwork that was done during the NECEC study is a prime example of the ISO core value of collaboration.”

After 16 years at the ISO, Hussey said he’s seen his mentees become mentors to newer engineers. And he’s seen them take projects he worked on as a new employee in directions he never would have imagined. It’s the kind of thing that can only happen if you stay in one place long enough, and your colleagues do the same, he said.

 “When you come into work, if you know what you’re doing is going to be interesting and is going to scratch an intellectual itch, is going to have a real impact, and you’re going to be supported through that process, I honestly think that’s what the recipe is,” said Hussey. “It really means there is something special going on.”