I'm super excited to be in the power industry right now at such an fast-changing time when so many players are constantly innovating to address the challenges and opportunities we face in the energy transition, creating new solutions to adapt and push progress further to ensure a sustainable and reliable future of energy access for all.
Who am I
Hi, I'm Miriam, I'm a renewable energy engineering student and such a nerd about my degree! As such, I'm super excited to put it to good use and keep learning as a young professional in the power sector.
I also pride myself on being someone who's easy to talk to, friendly and upbeat, and always looking to learn more and give things a go!
Why I chose a career in power
The industry excites me with its possibilities. It seems clear to me that with the collective push for the energy transition, but also a just transition that ensures security for all stakeholders, there are so many possibilities for what direction the industry may take and what it might look like in 5, 10, 20 years from now. The idea of playing apart in that shaping is very exciting and I am keen to be a voice at the table for how we can best plan for the needs of today and of the future.
Where it all started
My interest in the sector begun with a question: why don't we have more renewables in our energy mix in Australia? We have plenty of sun and wind, the technology is mature, so what gives? Learning the answer to that question in the form of a variety of challenges in real-world integration of renewables, such as the need for firming infrastructure, ride-through capability and other technical challenges created by our historic approach to energy systems, has led to my particular interest in grid management, and what we can do from a grid point of view to integrate more clean energy sources into our everyday use at all both the transmission and distribution level.
My work experience.
What's next?
Most recently, I completed a summer internship at Endeavour Energy where I developed a much deeper understanding of the actual work going into getting electricity from a generator to people who make use of it. I worked in the reliability and resilience team and gained a deep appreciation for the dedicated work being done to ensure that considering the increasing risks our grid faces with climate change, and the changing nature of the grid itself (renewables, data centres, batteries, etc!), our network can provide electricity securely in the day-to-day and under extreme conditions.
I also developed skills in using SQL, navigating data access and quality in real-world settings and working in a team with other interns developing a programme to monitor our network's readiness to withstand emergencies
Prior to this I worked for almost 2 years at a small acoustic engineering consultancy called Day Design, where I developed strong basics for working as a professional in engineering, learning how to write professionally, interact with clients and other stakeholders, built technical skills in proficiency in Excel, Word, Python.
The next career step for me logically is to begin a graduate role in the power sector and continue to build my confidence in applying my skills and developing them further. A grad role provides the benefit of usually being structured to see multiple departments of a company and expose me to different types of work.