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Jennifer Mayadas-Dering: ops planning at the NYPA
Working for the New York Power Authority, she and her team help ensure reliability of the entire power transmission system for New York State
 Jennifer Mayadas-Dering worked in electrical power generation for nearly ten years, helping to build power plants and other large capital projects for the New York Power Authority (White Plains, NY). A year ago she segued into the area of power transmission with the authority.
Dering enjoys learning from others. In her new role of manager of operations planning, she draws on her team members’ knowledge to help ensure the reliability of the entire transmission system for New York State. The team monitors NYPA-owned transmission sites and equipment and tracks line outages; it also does real-time analysis and short-term planning studies for the state transmission system.
As a major generating and transmission owner in New York State, NYPA interacts directly with the New York Independent System Operator (NY ISO), the group that runs the New York State Transmission System. Dering’s group is an active part of that relationship.
“We may advise the NY ISO about conditions that concern us, and we definitely leave our BlackBerries on,” Dering says with a smile. “Perhaps we can’t do a lot to proactively protect the system, but our engineers understand the transmission network very well. If a plant is taking a circuit breaker out of service, for example, we may come up with a plan to guard against possible problems. We look at how the missing breaker will affect everything else.”
Largest state-owned power organization
The New York Power Authority is America’s largest state-owned power organization. It operates eighteen generating facilities and more than 1,400 circuit miles of high-voltage transmission lines. Working to federal requirements, the authority sells power to government agencies, community-owned electric systems, rural electric co-ops, companies, private utilities and neighboring states.
Dering has worked for the authority since 1994. She started in the nuclear licensing group and then moved into the energy efficiency group as a conservation engineer. Before that she worked in IT.
Today, her team of five staffers analyzes the stability of the transmission lines. Besides helping to ensure daily reliability, they also keep an eye on the condition of old lines and, when necessary, recommend upgrades.
A lot of Dering’s daily work involves short-term planning studies. Staff members are assigned one or two projects at a time. The team evaluates short-term outages and problems in the system and makes sure contingencies are addressed, Dering says.
For her part, “I do a ton of reading on industry-related information, regulations and NY ISO information,” she says. “I’m still on a learning curve so I take on more than I normally would. I have to seek out information I’ll need to know.”
Beyond the nitty gritty
As a manager, she doesn’t need to be involved in the “nitty gritty” details of what her staff is doing. They’re experienced and talented, she notes, each with some twenty years in the industry. While other NYPA transmission staff is based in mid-state Utica, Dering’s tightly knit group works out of NYPA’s administrative office in White Plains, NY.
“I sit side by side with them to learn from them. Staff meetings are very interactive. We are pretty close here,” Dering says.
Part of Mentornet
For the past six years Dering has volunteered as part of Mentornet (www.mentornet.net), an e-mentoring network promoting diversity in engineering and science. She mentors several less-experienced women, and she’s especially interested in minority women since her father is from India. All the mentoring is done online; her current mentee lives in Chicago.
“A lot of mentoring is involved with work and family-balance issues, internships, and focusing your education toward an end goal,” Dering says.
She gives a lot of credit to her own two mentors: Rich Ardolino, VP of engineering at the authority, and Steve DeCarlo, senior VP of transmission. Ardolino has advised her for twelve years and “He’s one of the most technically qualified people I’ve ever met,” she says. DeCarlo “has a contagious enthusiasm,” and has taught her about motivating people. “It’s something you can’t learn from a book. You have to have a role model,” Dering says.
Growing up techie
Dering grew up in Westchester, NY and Palo Alto, CA. Her mom runs a computer lab and her dad, with a PhD in engineering physics, worked for IBM and is now a program director for the Sloan Foundation.
When Dering was growing up she would visit her dad’s lab at IBM. She shared her parents’ enthusiasm for applied math and physics, and has a 1991 BSEE from the University of Vermont. Her first job was with IBM Credit Corp as a computer consultant. Later she went to night school for her 1995 MSEE at Polytechnic University (Brooklyn, NY).
Work at the authority
In early 1994, while she was still a grad student, Dering joined the Power Authority as an engineering intern at the James A. FitzPatrick nuclear power plant near Oswego, NY. The plant has since been sold to Entergy Corp.
In September 1994 Dering was hired by NYPA as a conservation engineer, working on turnkey management for energy-efficiency projects throughout New York State. “We would go into school districts, municipal buildings and hospitals and evaluate their lighting and energy management loads. If there was an opportunity for savings, we would run the whole program to change out their lights and they would pay us back through energy savings,” Dering says.
In 1997 Dering became a senior project engineer in power generation. At one point she was project engineer on an in-city generation project, taking the project from a blank chart on the wall to the flip of the switch to turn it on.
Lead EE on several projects
From 2003 to 2004 Dering was a senior EE for power generation/power systems equipment. She was the authority’s lead EE on several projects, taking on increasingly important assignments. One of them was a life extension and modernization study for the 2,400-megawatt Niagara hydro project.
She also managed multi-year contracts, conceptual and physical designs, equipment procurement, scheduling and budgeting.
A turning point in Dering’s career came in 2006, when she served as acting project manager for a transmission project in Brooklyn that involved an interconnection between a small NYPA generation facility and a substation owned by Con Edison. Her performance on this one-year assignment led to her promotion and transfer into NYPA’s transmission group, where she currently works as manager of operations planning.
Busy downtime
Outside work Dering is a member of her town’s conservation advisory council. She also coaches a kindergarten soccer team on behalf of her own two kids, aged four and six.
“Being a mom is much more difficult than I expected,” she says with a laugh. “But my husband is extremely supportive of my career, and I have great babysitters and great managers and bosses who understand that family is important.”
Busy and challenged
On the job, she enjoys being constantly busy and constantly challenged. “I like the day-to-day challenges I’m facing. Every day brings something different, and every day there’s something we can learn from,” Dering says. “The people make it a lot of fun, and I love the power industry itself.”
D/C
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