Power Electronics-Rich Power System Modeling Internship - Spring 2023

Our Mission  

SPAN develops products that accelerate the rapid adoption of renewable energy in the home. The flagship SPAN Smart Panel is the first true evolution for the traditional home electric panel, harnessing enhanced technology for metering, monitoring, and control. An expanded product suite of intelligent, integrated solutions radically lowers the cost and complexity of energy upgrades–including solar, batteries and EVs–empowering homeowners to be active, resilient and informed players in the energy market. 

The Role 

SPAN’s Power System Modeling Group is seeking a driven modeling intern to engage with the development of a highly-flexible simulation platform with the utility for both the software- and hardware-in-the loop. The modeling engineer will participate in the development of the physics-based foundational modeling infrastructure, from the device-level all the way up to the system-level, used by hardware, firmware, controls, and mechanical teams to evaluate technologies and partnerships that augment SPAN’s Panel and Drive products and accelerate electrifying homes.

Ideal candidates are desired to be well acquainted with knowledge of power electronics their into power systems and be passionate about learning new topics pertinent to their integration including electric circuits, control theory, system-level operation for the development of analytical and computational models that accurately predict the dynamic component and systems-level physics behavior for currently available and future home electrification technologies.

Responsibilities

In this role, you will get involved in one or more of the followings:

• Help building an automated efficient physics-informed modeling infrastructure, leveraging analytical and computational models, that will be used by hardware and design engineers to drive component tradeoff studies, product specifications, system design, integration, and system optimization analyses for the SPAN Panel, SPAN Drive, and partner home electrification hardware.

• Collaborate with hardware engineers to specify product experiments to verify and validate component and system modeling efforts; collaborate with engineers and scientists across teams to interpret test data.

• Load management and source performance, degradation, and fault prognosis and diagnosis of SPAN Panel and Drive products when integrated with various technologies across a number of manufacturers, including electric vehicle batteries, home energy storage systems, solar arrays, power electronics inverters and converters, and home appliances and thermal systems.

• Collaborate with the software backend team to evaluate compute technologies and services for improving the accuracy, efficiency, security, and computational time of power systems simulations.

• Evaluate the scalability of hardware component and home electrical system models for integration into utility-level power systems and interactions with the grid under a wide range of operating conditions, and incorporate high granularity and accuracy where simulation acceleration is a priority.

• Collaborate with controls and firmware teams to integrate the physics-informed modeling infrastructure with a development environment that accurately emulates the code, processor architecture, analog-to-digital measurement sensors, and logic-level actuators for the SPAN Panel, SPAN Drive, and partner home electrification hardware.

• Support SPAN’s executive staff, product, and business team with techno-economic simulation and analysis to evaluate the viability of research and development projects, technology partnerships, and our product roadmap.

About You 

We are seeking modeling interns who meet the following requirements:

• Graduate Student in Systems Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Applied Physics, Applied Mathematics, or similar technical field that directly involves power electronics and systems.

• Expert in MathWorks/Simulink, Python, and/or Julia as a scientific analysis and modeling platform.

• Experienced building and maintaining physics-based/informed electromechanical, electrochemical, and electrothermal models for electrical components used in power electronics converters, electric machines, energy storage systems, and solar panels.

• Solid understanding of the hardware peripherals for MCU, DSP, or similar processors.

• Familiar with system integration principles of power electronics, particularly in low-voltage microgrid setting.

• Strong data aggregation, analysis, and visualization skills.

Life at SPAN

SPAN embraces diversity and equal opportunity in a serious way. We are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. 

Headquartered in San Francisco’s vibrant SoMa neighborhood, we are an eclectic group of creative thinkers who value open communication, teamwork, and a ‘make it happen’ approach to addressing complex challenges. 

Our CEO, Arch Rao⁠—former head of the Tesla Powerwall team⁠—fosters an energetic and collaborative environment, with a strong emphasis on maintaining work-life-balance across the organization.

We’re hiring talented individuals who are driven by success and are passionate about shaping the future of renewable energy. If that sounds like you, we’d love for you to consider joining the rapidly growing team at SPAN.

The Perks:

⚡ Competitive compensation + equity grants at a well-funded, venture-backed company

⚡ Comprehensive benefits (including medical; dental, vision, life and disability insurance)

⚡ Comfortable, sunny office space located near BART and Caltrain public transit

⚡ Strong focus on teambuilding and company culture (events, meet-ups, clubs)

⚡ Flexible hours and unlimited PTO

Our Mission & Values:

At SPAN, we believe that powering your home with clean energy should be a simple and delightful experience that is at its essence human-centered and technology-forward.

Our core values include:

• Making home energy more accessible, intuitive, and convenient.

• Enabling homes and vehicles to be powered by the sun.

• Building resilient homes with reliable power.

• All-electric everything.

• A more flexible & distributed grid.

Interested in joining our team? Submit an application today and we’ll be in touch with next steps!