Director, Executive Engineer Consultant
Academic Background
- B.S., Electrical Engineering, Power Emphasis, Washington State University (Summa Cum Laude) 1996
- M.B.A., Saint Mary’s College of California (with Honors) 2007
Professional Experience
Benjamin Williams is an engineering professional with a strong background in technical and leadership skills and a broad understanding of the electrical utility industry. Mr. Williams’ electric utility industry career spans from 1994 to present and includes experience in transmission system planning, generation interconnection, transmission operations engineering, NERC and regional O&P standards and compliance (focus on WECC), substation engineering, and system protection (primarily RAS). Mr. Williams has performed work throughout the Western Interconnection and beyond and he is particularly adept at combining creativity with engineering judgment and an eye for detail to efficiently produce accurate and useful results for clients.
Mr. Williams joined Utility System Efficiencies, Inc. (USE) in 2008. With USE, Mr. Williams has independently and collaboratively performed and led transmission planning studies using steady-state power flow, transient stability, and voltage stability analysis on a plethora of significant projects and has performed compliance assurance work related to NERC Operations & Planning and regional standards for entities located throughout the US. His work has included coordinating and performing technical studies for numerous projects of various sizes including several large projects such as the Northern Lights HVDC line proposed from Alberta to Oregon and the Lamar – Front Range Project in Colorado. Mr. Williams has also assisted a number of organizations extensively in generation interconnection studies, analyses, and processes, including siting recommendations, primarily in the California Independent System Operator BAA. He has represented USE in WECC Planning Coordination Committee (PCC), Operating Committee (OC) and Peak Member Advisory Committee (MAC) meetings. In 2014, Mr. Williams joined USE’s Compliance Team and has contributed to numerous preliminary compliance audits and special projects including CIP-014 R2 verification analysis and has regularly attended NERC and WECC compliance workshops.
While employed at Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) for 12 years, Mr. Williams worked as a transmission planning engineer, a transmission operations engineer and supervisor, and a substation engineer, supervising and training up to six employees while serving as Technical Lead for PG&E’s Bulk System group in Operations Engineering. Mr. Williams identified upgrade and RMR reduction options; solved outdoor, indoor, and controls design problem with custom design elements for a large new underground cable project; developed sophisticated load flow tools; provided real-time engineering support to transmission system dispatchers and clearance coordinators; and performed critical dynamic stability modeling following a major San Francisco outage. Mr. Williams is proficient in the use of analytic tools for evaluating system performance and has championed, analyzed, and designed a large number of capital projects during his career.
