BESS PV Engineer

Bess/PV Engineer
Brief Description Of Sunstrong Management
SunStrong Management is a leading independent asset management and servicing platform specializing in residential and commercial solar energy portfolios. SunStrong provides end-to-end services including operations and maintenance, customer billing and support, asset performance management, and investor reporting. The company partners with leading capital providers to optimize clean energy assets at scale, supporting the growth of distributed renewable energy while delivering reliable performance and exceptional customer experience
Position Overview
The BESS/PV Engineer is the owner-side technical authority for SunStrong Management's solar PV and battery energy storage delivery portfolio. The role reviews designs, interrogates contractor engineering and test results, and establishes the technical position that Project Managers and gate decisions rest on, across SSM-originated, re-powering, remediation, and inherited in-flight projects, working with EPCs, OEMs, utilities, AHJs, and field service partners.
Project Delivery reports into Commercial Operations by design. The organization that will operate an asset for thirty years sets the standard by which it is accepted at twelve months. A project is not delivered when it is complete; it is delivered when Operations can run it.
The distinguishing expectation is independent technical judgment. The Engineer does not forward the EPC's engineering with a cover note. The Engineer recalculates the contractor's capacity test, finds the protection coordination gap before energization, and recognizes when a battery fire-safety submittal rests on test data that does not match the as-built configuration, and says so in writing.
The Engineer evaluates and recommends. The role does not direct the EPC's means and methods, approve change orders, or make gate decisions; those authorities sit with the Director and the gate owner per SSM-PD-001. Where the Engineer's technical position and a Project Manager's forecast disagree, both are reported and the gap is escalated to the Director.
Essential Duties And Responsibilities
Design Review & Engineering Standards
Lead the technical review of PV and BESS design packages — single-lines, array and block layouts, DC and AC collection, grounding, medium-voltage and protection design, controls architecture, and civil and structural interfaces — against the contracted scope and SSM standards.
Verify that design basis assumptions are conservative and traceable — module and inverter derates, DC/AC ratio, clipping, degradation, BESS usable energy, round-trip efficiency, auxiliary load, and availability — and that they match the assumptions behind the performance guarantees.
Review short-circuit, protection coordination, arc flash, and grounding studies; confirm that each study describes the equipment actually procured rather than a reference design.
Review BESS safety design — enclosure and block spacing, thermal management, fire detection and suppression, explosion control and ventilation, and emergency response planning — against NFPA 855, NEC Article 706, UL 9540 and UL 9540A test data, and AHJ requirements. Confirm that the test data applies to the configuration being installed.
Provide the technical content of the operability review of drawing sets against SSM standards — O&M access, equipment standardization against the fleet, monitoring and points architecture, protection and isolation, spares, and maintainability. Operability comments cost nothing at design review and cost a mobilization after energization.
Author and maintain the SSM fleet equipment standard, reference design details, and engineering review checklists in partnership with Portfolio Management and Field Service.
Owner’s Engineering & EPC Technical Oversight
Review submittals, RFIs, and engineering change requests; return technical dispositions with the reasoning stated, not only the outcome.
Define the technical content of Inspection and Test Plans — hold and witness points, acceptance criteria, and required records — for PV, BESS, and medium-voltage scopes; witness factory and site acceptance tests as assigned.
Evaluate nonconformances for technical significance and recommend disposition; distinguish a documentation defect from a defect in the installed work.
Evaluate the technical basis of change order requests — design deficiency, scope gap the contractor should have caught, or genuine added scope — and provide that evaluation to the Project Manager and Project Controls.
Review equipment selection and substitution requests against the SSM fleet standard, warranty terms, and long-term serviceability, including spares availability and OEM service coverage.
Reconcile as-built conditions to the design record; where drawings and field conditions disagree, the field condition governs the record and the drawings are corrected.
Support the as-is technical assessment of inherited in-flight construction — equipment condition, installed versus designed configuration, and surviving test records — to establish a defensible baseline.
Commissioning, Testing & Performance Validation
Review commissioning plans, procedures, and test protocols for inverters, PCS, battery systems, EMS and plant controller, protection, and SCADA before testing begins; recommend acceptance or return with comments.
Witness commissioning activities as assigned — inverter and PCS startup, BESS energization and first charge, protection relay testing, and utility witness testing.
Independently recalculate PV capacity and performance test results (for example, per ASTM E2848 where contracted) and BESS capacity, round-trip efficiency, ramp rate, response time, and availability results against the contracted test protocol rather than accepting the contractor’s computation.
Verify EMS and plant controller behavior — dispatch, state-of-charge limits, ramp and power-factor control, curtailment response, and applicable interconnection and ride-through requirements — against the interconnection agreement and offtake obligations.
Validate monitoring end to end with the Portfolio Manager — points-to-points against the SSM data model, alarm verification, and continuous clean data over the validation window.
Produce the post-completion performance analysis — measured PI, BESS capacity, and efficiency against expectation at 30, 90, and 180 days. A project is not closed when the work is finished; it is closed when the performance it was built to deliver has been demonstrated.
Performance Analysis, Failure Analysis & Remediation Engineering
Support re-powering and remediation scopes with technical scope definition — module, inverter, tracker, and BOS replacement; DC/AC rebalancing; BESS augmentation and retrofit — including the interconnection, structural, and protection implications that distinguish them from new construction.
Perform root cause analysis on equipment failures, underperformance, and recurring faults; distinguish defect, design deficiency, installation error, and operating condition, and document the basis to a standard that survives manufacturer and insurer review.
Provide the technical substantiation for warranty, performance guarantee, and insurance claims — failure evidence, test data, and loss quantification — in support of the Project Manager who owns the claim.
Analyze fleet performance data — production, availability, degradation, battery state of health, and alarm history — and route recurring failure modes into design standards and contractor and equipment selection.
Track product safety notices, recalls, code-cycle changes, and the field history of installed platforms; recommend the fleet response.
Safety & Compliance
Verify design and construction compliance with NEC, IEEE, UL, NFPA, AHJ, and utility requirements.
Support development and review of BESS emergency response plans, hazard mitigation analysis, and first-responder coordination.
Provide engineering input to JHAs, PEC/LOTO requirements, and energization sequencing, including stored-energy hazards in DC and battery systems.
Exercise stop-work authority without hesitation when design or installed conditions create an imminent hazard. SSM supports every exercise of stop-work authority by owner-side personnel without exception.
Support incident and near-miss investigation, including thermal events, with technical analysis independent of the party that performed the work.
Documentation & Technical Records
Maintain the technical record on assigned projects — design basis, review comments and dispositions, test records, and approved deviations — so that every position is traceable to evidence.
Verify the technical content of turnover documentation — as-builts, test records, firmware and configuration baselines, manuals, and warranty documentation — for completeness, legibility, and attribution; reject incomplete submissions rather than backfilling them.
Provide equipment serial numbers, firmware versions, and configuration baselines to the equipment register as construction data lands, so that delivery data reconciles to operations data after turnover.
Participate in lessons-learned reviews and route findings back into design standards and contractor selection.
Qualifications And Experience
Bachelor

Work arrangement
Yes