A licensed Professional Engineer with over 22 years of utility experience, Zeus Xioco is a technical leader and subject matter expert specializing in power systems automation, substation and grid modernization, and the evaluation, testing, and deployment of advanced energy technologies. Zeus joined Tesco Automation in April 2026, following an extensive career with Southern California Edison, where he held engineering and management roles leading multidisciplinary teams across substation automation, advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), and energy storage.
Throughout his career, he has focused on developing and deploying standards-based utility architectures that improve safety, reliability, cybersecurity, and operational efficiency across transmission and distribution systems. At Southern California Edison, he served as a technical authority for IEC 61850-based substation automation, leading the transition from legacy, vendor-specific protection and control systems to a modern, interoperable substation platform. His work included system architecture definition, laboratory validation, and initial field deployment, helping position SCE as one of the first U.S. utilities to standardize on IEC 61850 at scale.
His responsibilities encompassed defining automation architectures, developing engineering standards and specifications, and establishing best practices for logical node and data modeling, GOOSE messaging, MMS communications, and system redundancy. He led cross-functional teams to ensure successful integration of IEC 61850 systems with substation networks, protection devices, and operational systems.
He placed strong emphasis on system validation and interoperability testing, utilizing Real Time Digital Simulator (RTDS) platforms to perform closed loop testing of protection, automation, and control schemes, reducing commissioning risk and improving system reliability.
He also played a key role in advancing virtualized and software-defined protection and control systems and was an active participant in the VPAC Alliance, contributing to industry collaboration on flexible, scalable IEC 61850-based architectures. His leadership combines deep protocol-level expertise, systems level thinking, and disciplined technical governance, enabling the successful translation of emerging standards into reliable, production-ready utility solutions.
