A senior engineer who has spent more than 20 years working to ensure Ireland’s electricity needs are being met, has spoken about how the job is “constantly evolving” due to demand growth and an increase of renewable energy in the power system.
Deirdre Merriman, senior grid control engineer at EirGrid, is part of the dedicated team working 24 hours a day from the National Control Centre (NCC), balancing electricity supply and demand across the entire country.
“You’re constantly making sure your contingency plans are there and that your system is secure,” the Dublin native said of her role at the NCC. “It’s really exciting, there is a sense of pride in what you do.”
After completing a degree in mechanical and manufacturing engineering at the former Dublin Institute of Technology, Merriman entered the graduate scheme at ESB.
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After working across the business for more than a year, she was asked to train in the control centre, where she took up a permanent role in 2006, when EirGrid was founded.
Despite being in the job for two decades, her role helping to keep the lights on has never become monotonous.
“It’s been the one job for 20 years, but it’s changed. I’d say I’ve gone through five or six different versions of the job as the system has evolved,” she said. “The power system has massively evolved. EirGrid was part of ESB back then. I think there was one wind farm on the system.
“We didn’t have an electricity market back then; there was just one price per generator per day. We didn’t have batteries, we didn’t have solar. The rules are constantly evolving and changing.
“There’s been a lot of learning, a lot of new technologies that we’ve had to get used to,” she added.
EirGrid is responsible for operating, developing and enhancing Ireland’s electricity grid and market operations, while also planning for Ireland’s long term electricity needs.
Engineers balance electricity supply to demand in real time from the National Control Centre. Operating a power system with electricity generated from high levels of variable renewables, such as wind and solar, is complex and technically very challenging.
With her responsibilities varying from scheduling generation, to communicating with power generators and dealing with transmission outages, every shift is guaranteed to be busy.
“It’s a lunch at the desk kind of job,” she said. “It depends heavily on the weather. If we’ve got a really windy, stormy day, we staff up to manage that.
“You’d be preparing for the evening peak, making sure you’ve got enough generation available to meet demand.
“Obviously, there’s a lot less demand during the night so you have to reduce the generation output overnight, but you can’t reduce it too low or we could compromise system stability. We have a minimum number of conventional generators that we need to keep on at all times. We’re seeing some evolving trends at night such as people charging electric vehicles, so we need to be able to ensure we can meet this increase in electricity demand at night, for example.”
Merriman’s work schedule sees her working six days on and three days off, with two night shifts per shift cycle, and public holidays such as Christmas included – something which the mother-of-three and her family are now used to.
“The kids are well used to it. My eldest is 17 and I’ve been on shift for 20 years now, so they know no different.”
She also makes the time to get involved in EirGrid’s educational partnerships, including SciFest. With International Women’s Day taking place on March 6th, she spoke of how important these programmes are in encouraging more girls to pursue careers in engineering and similar industries.
Recalling that there were just two women in her class in college, she said: “It is great to see the girls who have an interest in science and maths. I think it’s just about trying to promote Stem with girls from a young age and show that it is such a wide-ranging field.”
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