Dustin Tessier is the Managing Director for Tesco Group of companies, which is a turn-key substation provider that specializes in the engineering, construction and commissioning of protection, control and automation systems within the power system sector; with a focus on IEC 61850 based systems.

Dustin was an early advocate for IEC 61850 during his days with a Canadian Utility, and eventually migrated to Siemens where he was involved in Australia’s first IEC 61850 substation applications.  Dustin has since moved back to Canada to assist in his family-based company, and has been involved with IEC 61850 on a global perspective since, including leadership roles and participation in the following standards activities:

• The Canadian Chair of the IEC Technical Committee 57, which is responsible for preparing international standards for power systems control equipment and systems including substation and distribution automation EMS, DMS, tele-protection, and associated information exchange for real-time and non-real-time information, used in the planning, operation and maintenance of power utility systems.
• Canadian Chair of the IEC Smart Energy Systems Committee responsible for harmonizing the IEC standards that compose the global Smart Grid Roadmap.
• Founder of the IEC 61850 University.com, which is an on-line platform used to offer 61850 training, testing and consulting services.
• Founder of IEC 61850 Process Bus User Task Force, which is composed of over 30 members from 19 utilities across 7 countries.
• Technical expert within the IEC 61850 Working Group, which is responsible for developing standards for the power utility automation domain.
• Task Force Leader for the IEC 61850 HMI Task Force and recipient of the Canadian Innovative Initiative Pilot Project
• Technical expert within Technical Committee 38, Working Group 37, which is responsible for developing standards for NCITs and stand-alone merging units.
• A member of the UCA International IEC 61850 Testing Committee.
• This participation has led Dustin to being awarded the 2015 Canadian IEC Young Professional of the Year.

For more details on Dustin’s experience and qualifications please see his resume.

Grant Gilchrist, P. Eng., is a Systems Engineer specializing in grid modernization for Tesco Electric Ltd.  He is a member of several utility data communications standards groups including the IEC working groups for SCADA, substation automation, protocol security, and interoperability.  He is a founding member of the Technical Committee for the Distributed Network Protocol (DNP3) and served as the committee’s secretary for seven years .  He has helped several major utilities develop technical requirements for their Advanced Metering Infrastructures (AMI) and other grid modernization programs. He was editor of the IEC 62351-5 standard for security of the IEC 60870-5 and DNP3 protocols, and the IEEE Power and Energy Society award-winning IEEE 1815.1 standard for gateways between IEC 61850 and DNP3.  Talk to him about the application of use case methodology to the power industry and why it works better than just brainstorming ideas.

He specializes in visualizations of the Smart Grid and developed the NIST Smart Grid Framework “cloud” and Reference Model diagrams.

Before joining the power industry, Grant spent a total of 17 years developing embedded data communications software for GE Energy and Nortel Networks.  He has a Bachelor of Applied Science in Systems Engineering from the University of Regina, Saskatchewan, and is a registered Professional Engineer in Canada.

Greg has over 20 years experience working as a IEC 61850 Testing Technologist and Strategic Advisor to SCE on their substation architectures. Greg is a technical expert on SCE’s PLC implementation, and has gained substantial experience completing the functional acceptance testing using the Doble and Omicron test sets. Greg has been instrumental in supporting SCE’s Substation Automation Laboratory and has been involved in the testing and evaluation of station bus and process bus solutions.

Braden Olson is a Principal Protection and Automation engineer who has more than 15 years of hands-on electric utility experience. Before joining Tesco, he worked as a Senior Engineering consultant for GE, providing protection and automation consulting engineering services for transmission, distribution and generation customers. He acted as lead consultant and key account manager for major utility customers in the Western United States and specialized in digital substation projects.

Before becoming a consultant, Braden worked at two different utilities. He worked for almost 7 years at Southern California Edison (SCE), in Advanced Technology, where he was responsible for research and development of new substation protection and automation technology. This included developing, piloting and standardizing SCE’s next generation substation automation system based around IEC 61850. He also has extensive experience and knowledge about SCE’s protection and automation standards and design. Before SCE, Braden worked at Salt River Project (SRP) for almost 7 years, in the system protection and control engineering areas. At SRP, Braden worked on several major projects, including designing and commissioning one of the largest Remedial Action Schemes (RAS) in the western United States. Braden has extensive utility experience related to system protection, substation automation, IEC 61850, substation design and commissioning.

Braden received his Bachelors of Science in Electrical Engineering degree from Montana State University. He is a Professional Engineer in the state of California.

Darren De Ronde, P.E. is a Principal Protection Engineer who has more than 20 years of hands-on electric utility experience bringing together the right combination of detailed drawings, relay setting/programming, digital communications, and documentation to deliver successful and repeatable projects. He has broad experience in engineering protection and control systems for mission critical environments such as data centers and utility transmission systems. Darren is a firm believer that consistency is key and great designs meet both business goals AND operational needs.

Before joining Tesco, Darren worked as a Data Center Protection Engineer for Google, where he designed modern protection systems based on IEC 61850 to be capable of scaling globally in a repeatable and rapidly deployable fashion. This work included designing cost-effective digital substation architectures across multiple different vendor products that could be deployed across different continents. With operational needs in mind, Darren developed training specifically for site personnel and instructed the class so that folks responsible for the equipment were prepared with the necessary skills to operate and maintain the digital design.

Darren’s previous work experience includes working at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories in their Engineering Services division working on configuring relays, developing construction drawing packages, and field commissioning. Additionally, Darren worked for the utility Xcel Energy as a system protection engineer and as a consultant at Ulteig Engineers as a substation design engineer.

Darren received his Bachelors of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering degree from Calvin University in Grand Rapids, MI. He is a registered Professional Engineer in the states of California and Minnesota.

Eric Xu is a Principal Protection and Automation Engineer based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, with over 14 years of expertise in Real-Time Digital Simulations and testing of IEC 61850 based PAC schemes. His professional journey is marked by an extensive background in control hardware-in-the-loop simulation development and applications.

Prior to his role at Tesco, Eric held pivotal positions at RTDS Technologies, progressing from Simulation Engineer to Lead Engineer, Lead Applications Engineer, and ultimately, Principal Engineer within the Protection and Automation group that oversaw the development and training of RTDS’s IEC 61850 interface. His responsibilities encompassed the development of power system and control models, advanced protective relay models, and network communication-related models such as IEC 61850, DNP3, and IEC 60870-5-104. Eric’s notable contributions also include the design of application cases addressing the protection and control of power systems with substantial Inverter-Based Resource penetration. He initiated the creation of the first in-house training course focused on the applications of protection and automation, showcasing his commitment to knowledge dissemination.

As a key member of the Tesco’s IEC 61850 Systems Integration & Testing team, Eric plays a pivotal role in delivering daily customer support, conducting on-site commissioning, and providing training to clients worldwide.

Eric holds a Bachelor of Science in Aircraft Design Engineering from Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi’an, China, and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, MB. He is a Registered Professional Engineer in the Province of Manitoba and holds senior membership status in the IEEE. Additionally, Eric contributes his expertise to the field by actively participating as a member of IEC Technical Committee 57 Working Group 10, focusing on the development of communication standards for substations – specifically, IEC 61850.