Xcel Energy (NASDAQ: XEL) is a leading energy provider and Fortune 500 company, dedicated to serving millions of electricity and natural gas customers across eight states: Minnesota, Colorado, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota, New Mexico and Texas. We make energy work better for our customers, helping them thrive every day. That means always raising the bar - delivering better service and providing more reliable, resilient, and sustainable energy.
Xcel Energy is a place where you’ll have opportunities to grow, expand your skills, and help lead the clean energy transition. We offer meaningful rewards, recognition, and support to help you build your career and make an impact - both on the job and beyond. Most importantly, it means you’ll be joining a company that knows employees are the driving force behind its success and is committed to helping you be your best.
Xcel Energy supports a hybrid work model to enable collaboration and flexibility. Many roles are expected to work onsite three days per week (Tuesday–Thursday); however, work location expectations vary based on role, team, and business needs.
The below job summary and responsibilities reflect the duties of the Trading Analyst, Associate Trading Analyst will differ as less skills and/or experience will be required. The successful candidate will be placed at a level that is commensurate with the candidate's skills and experience.
Position Summary
Design and perform quantitative analysis to price wholesale energy commodity transactions and quantify and hedge risk. Plan and optimize seasonal, monthly, balance-of-month, and daily resource commitment schedules and portfolio positions to provide the most economic operations of the power system portfolios. Perform post-analysis of actual dispatch and system operations for each of the Xcel Energy power system portfolios to determine opportunities for efficiency improvements. Submit XE's bids and offers into organized markets, which requires the employee to be classified as Wholesale Merchant Function.
Essential Responsibilities
Design and perform quantitative studies of historical and forecasted prices, system loads, fuel costs, and determination of the natural position of XE's power system portfolios. Support trading and risk management activities through quantifying the natural position of each XE regulated operating company. Troubleshoot daily operation of XE's regulated electric operating companies and provide technical support to real-time traders during daily operation of the systems. Assist Fuels in the determination of forward fuel requirements and the daily gas nomination process.
Identify opportunities to improve system operations. Design and create analytical studies to model opportunities and determine costs/savings (e.g. rescheduling plant maintenance, alternative operating strategies for certain resources, etc.). Help plant operations personnel understand the market implications of plant operating decisions. Understand mechanical aspects of power plants and the potential optionality in the various power generation technologies. Understand electrical system constraints and operations.
Create and run modeling scenarios to optimize daily unit commitment, additional purchases/sales, and long-term energy limited or constrained seasonal purchases. Verify accuracy of results through extensive post-analysis of XE system performance. Evaluate short-term load forecasts, current plant/contract availability, fuel costs, and market conditions. Determine quantities of energy to buy/sell, optimal scheduling of constrained resources, and optimal commitment decisions for plants/contractual resources. Bid load and offer generation into organized markets on behalf of the company.
Design and perform post-analysis models of previous day system operation to determine opportunities for dispatch efficiency and purchase/sales improvements. Perform benchmarking of models as appropriate to assure analysis integrity. Verify…