In 2000-2002 Tanya worked extensively for large power generators during the Western US Energy Crisis of 2000 and 2001. This was a formative and educational expereince as – at the time – most generators selling into the West wished to operate even aging peaker plants at nearly 100% uptime.

Tanya worked as a management consultant on bottoms-up and top-down processes to improve uptime, just-in-time maintenance, heat rate reduction, and general operational and economic efficiency of large generating assets during an era of enormous pressure on people and machines to maximize productive value of every possible watt.

For more details about her later expereince with renewable generation, utility scale distributed energy resources, aggregated and consumer-scale demand side management please visit other portfolio pages.

Virtual Power Plants for Portland General Electric – Portland, OR

Virtual Power Plant Strategy (210 MW)

Quantified opportunity and defined minimum viable product as IT business partner and strategic lead for the Smart Grid Operations Virtual Power Plants (VPP) as a key component in PGEs distributed energy management strategy, roadmap and implementation. Established a theory on integrating, optimizing, and coordinating cutting edge demand response and distributed energy generation technologies, advanced communication, distribution automation, and business models for a highly renewable and distributed grid. Determined short, medium and long term technical and business constraints and opportunities to deliver over 200MW of capacity and regulation services with a virtual power plant by 2025. Project required deep investigation, planning and engagement with operational disciplines within PGE including: Power Operations; Transmission & Distribution Engineering; Advanced Distribution Management System rollout team; Distributed Energy Management ; Customer Digital Experience; Grid Products in order to understand minimum viable product and path for cost effective execution of VPP.

PacifiCorp for CH2MHill – Lewis River, WA

Lewis River Hydroelectric Project (510 MW) Hydroelectric Dams (Merwin, Yale, Swift 1 & 2)

Contracted with CH2MHill (now Jacobs) to create an operating and maintenance system and process in order for frontline maintenance employees to follow complex federal, state and local regulatory compliance behaviors for the PacifiCorp Lewis River Hydroelectric Projects system dam operations. Developed template for other PacifiCorp Hydro compliance handbooks. Required extensive knowledge of Oregon, Washington and US environmental regulation, deep understanding of daily operational behaviors and a data management and presentation architecture that was accessible and easily understood by operations, maintenance and janitorial staff.

Colorado Springs Utilities – Colorado Springs, CO

Martin-Drake (185 MW) Coal Fired Power Plant

Facilitated ten-person planning and scheduling action teams. Realized 14% worker productivity gains through successful implementation of Maintenance and Operations planning and scheduling. Calculated baseline data and aided in setting improvement targets for plant reliability, process, and Operations budget reductions goals. Trained two CSU internal consultants. Coached executives and their direct reports to foster process improvement. Integrated work management processes with existing computerized maintenance management system (Maximo: RMS2000) and various Access scheduling applications.

Tucson Electric Power – Tucson, AZ

Coolidge Generating Station (575 MW) Gas Simple-Cycle Peaking Plant

Facilitated Action Teams to develop work management processes around planning and scheduling of maintenance work. Developed data structure storage and documentation protocol for future work management procedures and documents. Introduced key performance indicators and problem-solving methodology as means of supporting plant superintendents and their direct reports in efforts to use ensure process sustainability and discipline.

Salt River Project – Page, AZ

Navajo Generating Station (2250 MW) Coal Fired Power Plant

Assessed client’s strengths, weaknesses and training needs. Audited and analyzed hundreds of equipment and work history records in the computerized maintenance management system (Indus). Suggested cost effective means to improve preventative maintenance program adherence and increase plant reliability.

BASF – Huntington, WV

Alkali Blue Pigment Manufacturing Plant

Leveraged client strengths, such as quality input into the Computerized Maintenance Management System, to plan and implement work management process improvements. Monitored data quality and process improvement measures using the computerized maintenance management system (SAP R/3). Reduced parts expediting and emergency work by 30%. Increased preventative maintenance program adherence.