All open positions
BRL-TEC-03 · Technology, Software & Data
Data Scientist, Renewable & Load Forecasting
Power Generation Pune / Hybrid · Hybrid 3–6 years · Mid
Every megawatt-hour we schedule carries a deviation risk, and every bid we place depends on a view of price and demand. You will build the solar, wind and load forecasting models that feed scheduling, trading and storage dispatch, and you will be judged on how much money better forecasts save.
Scope of work
- Build day-ahead and intraday generation forecasts for solar, wind and hybrid plants at 15-minute resolution.
- Build load forecasts for open-access and captive consumers to support their schedules and our supply portfolio.
- Develop short-term price forecasts for day-ahead and real-time market segments to support bidding and storage dispatch.
- Create and maintain data pipelines that combine plant SCADA data, availability declarations and weather forecasts.
- Measure forecast error the way the regulations do, and report deviation exposure per plant and per pooling station.
- Run back-tests that show the commercial value of each model change before it goes live.
- Detect and flag bad telemetry, curtailment periods and outages so that they do not corrupt training data.
- Deploy models as monitored services inside BARREL OS, with drift alerts and automatic fallbacks.
- Explain forecasts and their uncertainty to schedulers and traders in a form they can act on.
Technical description
- Numerical weather prediction inputs (for example GFS and ECMWF products) and satellite irradiance data.
- Time-series methods from statistical baselines to gradient boosting and deep learning sequence models, chosen by measured accuracy.
- Probabilistic forecasting with quantiles or prediction intervals, not only point forecasts.
- Error metrics and bands defined under CERC and SERC forecasting, scheduling and deviation settlement regulations.
- Python (pandas, scikit-learn, LightGBM or XGBoost, PyTorch) and SQL on PostgreSQL time-series data.
- Model packaging with Docker and scheduled retraining, with versioned data and models.
- Understanding of plant physics: irradiance on the tilted plane, temperature derating, wind power curves and wake effects.
Commercial description
- Measured on reduction in deviation charges and improvement in forecast accuracy across the portfolio.
- Supports the trading desk's margin on day-ahead and real-time bids through better price and volume views.
- Works with the scheduling team, plant O&M and external weather data vendors.
- Advises on the value of buying additional weather data or sensors against the savings they bring.
Skills required
- Building and validating time-series forecasting models on real, messy data.
- Strong Python and SQL.
- Feature engineering from weather, calendar and operational data.
- Sound statistics: cross-validation for time series, leakage control and significance of improvements.
- Putting models into production with monitoring, not only in notebooks.
- Data cleaning for sensor data, including gaps, stuck values and clock errors.
- Visualising results clearly for operations and trading users.
- Basic understanding of how Indian scheduling and deviation settlement work.
Talent we look for
- Measures everything against a simple baseline before claiming success.
- Enjoys sitting with schedulers and traders to understand how a forecast is actually used.
- Honest about uncertainty and comfortable saying a model is not good enough yet.
- Persistent with data quality problems that others would work around.
Qualifications
- B.Tech/M.Tech, M.Sc or M.Stat in Statistics, Data Science, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering or Atmospheric Science.
- At least 2 years building forecasting or predictive models used in production.
- Experience with renewable energy, power demand or weather data is a strong advantage.
More in Technology, Software & Data
BRL-TEC-01Head of Engineering, BARREL OSBARREL OS & Digital · Pune / Hybrid · 15–20 yearsView role BRL-TEC-02Senior Full-Stack Engineer, Power Trading ExchangeExchanges & Markets · Remote (India) · 6–10 yearsView role BRL-TEC-04Lead, OT Cyber Security & SCADA IntegrationTransmission & Grid · Pune + project travel · 10–14 yearsView role