José Luis Sánchez García

As the Regional Manager, the main activities can be divided in two groups; the first one being the Control and Optimization of a portfolio of +1400 MW of installed Eolic and Photovoltaic capacity, managing all the main O&M pipelines: Cost and Budget Control, Operational Excellence, QSE compliance, CMMS, Contract Management and Reporting. This can only be achieved by leading a multidisciplinary group of people, maintaining a high level of motivation and engagement with the company, and procuring a “healthy rotation” environment, which consist in locating key people in key positions while training and integrating new professionals in the team.

The second group of activities, consist in the real time assets operation, being the liaison between the company control center and the O&M and Engineering departments, TSO/DSO, clients and partners, while ensuring thorough compliance with all applicable regulations. For this, a team of highly specialized people is required, with solid negotiation and communications skills, capable of making high impact decisions, under high pressure circumstances.

As the head of the department, the main activities were the management and coordination of the personnel working in reliability studies, compliance of new power plants and design of operative strategies that guaranteed the security and reliability of the National electric system.

An important milestone reached while head of the department, was the coordination for the commissioning of three Eolic and two Photovoltaic power plants, assuring the complete compliance of the Mexican Grid Code.

As supervisor, the main activities were the Grid Expansion Planning; analysis, evaluation, and impact studies for the integration of renewable power plants in the Mexican Power System; support of real-time grid operators through power flow studies, stability assessments, outage coordination support, etc; follow up of the normative compliance of new power plants while in their commissioning process.

Among others, one of the main achievements, was the coordination of a nationwide group of experts, in charge of define, elaborate, and homologate the list of tests that renewable power plants would have to comply during their test period to prove their reliability before obtaining their commercial operation declaratory.

As an instructor, the main activities were the training and evaluation of the Mexican Grid operators, for which, besides a deep knowledge about the operation of large power systems, it was required a various set of soft skills, in order to engage with the trainees and keep them motivated, teach them how to deal with high pressure situations and make strategic decisions under such conditions, without compromising the reliability of the grid and the safety of the people working on it.

One important achievement while an instructor, was the participation in the design, testing and implementation of a new procedure to restore the Mexican power system after a total blackout.

As the assistant for the head of Client Service Engineering Department in Morelia, Mexico the main activities were the supervision and coordination of field personnel working in distribution networks (13.8 kV, 23 kV, and 34.5 kV).