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Our Team

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Hamilton

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Albert Le Roux

Engineer

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Albert has been involved in the electricity industry since 2010, moving to New Zealand from South Africa in 2017. Albert’s Tesla experience includes detailed design of secondary and primary substation equipment. 

Prior to moving to New Zealand, Albert’s experience gained in South Africa included roles as a Design/Project Engineer and Commissioning Engineer which gives him special insight into the level of detail need for a good design.

Albert is based in Tesla’s Auckland Office.

Andrew Whitehead

Design Manager

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Andrew has 12 years of experience in the electrical generation, transmission and distribution industry in New Zealand and Australia. He is an experienced project manager covering delivery of end to end projects in both supplier and client-side roles. 

Andrew’s specialist experience covers a broad range of projects including  feasibility and options assessments for transmission system upgrades and Design, Supply and Installation of High Voltage Cable Transmission circuits.

Andrew is based in Tesla’s Wellington Office.

Chayan Ghosh

Principal Engineer

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Joining Tesla in early 2021, Chayan, is a certified Functional Safety Engineer (FSEng), with over 15 years of experience in engineering and project management for multidisciplinary projects and in management of change activities.

By joining Tesla’s generation / substations team, Chayan provides additional capabilities in engineering management, safety instrumented systems design, hazardous area design, alarm management, functional safety, safety critical elements (SCEs) and process reviews for our key clients.

Chayan’s specialist area is from concept to detailed design and delivery of safety-critical aspects covering HAZOP with stakeholders, and facilitating CHAZOPs, alarm rationalisation workshops, functional safety workshops, LOPA workshops, SIL reviews and SIL verifications.

Chayan is based in Tesla’s Auckland office.

Chris Schinkel

Principal Engineer

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Chris is highly experienced in the power generation and transmission industry, commencing with NZED in 1984 and then DesignPower in 1988. 

Joining Tesla in 1995 in a power systems engineer role, Chris performs all aspects of engineering consultancy associated with the generation and transmission industry.

Chris is based in Tesla’s Hamilton Office.

David Spackman

Principal Engineer

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David is a chartered electrical engineer with over 12 years’ experience working in the electricity industry with transmission, distribution and generation utilities. 

David has worked in New Zealand and the UK as a project coordinator, project engineer, and  design consultant, joining Tesla in 2019.

David is one of New Zealand’s leading specialists in High Voltage cable engineering and is based in Tesla’s Hamilton Office.

Geoff Torr

Principal Engineer

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Geoff commenced his career with DesignPower in 1992 then joined Tesla in 1994 and has been involved in detailed design for a wide range of substation projects. 

In more recent times Geoff has been responsible for the design and management of major projects, and developing various Transpower standard protection and SCADA design templates. Geoff is a key member of Transpower’s SMS deployment team.

Geoff has been an elected member of Tesla’s Board of Directors since 2015, and serves as Board Chair. 

Geoff is based in Tesla’s Hamilton Office.

Jonny Lung

Engineer

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Joining Tesla in June 2019, Jonny has over 9 years of experience within the New Zealand electrical industry.

His experience includes 220/110kV secondary systems design, 11 to 66kV primary and secondary systems design plus cable ratings and load flow studies.

Jonny is based in Tesla’s Christchurch Office.

Matthew Hall

Technncial Director

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Matt joined Tesla Consultants in 2010, bringing with him substantial experience in HV substation design, earthing system design and testing. 

His experience also includes induced voltage and EPR hazard investigation, magnetic and electric field studies, HV cable modelling and installation design, Insulation coordination studies, project management, engineer to contract, and technical coordination roles.  Matt’s current role with Tesla sees him as Lead Engineer on numerous projects. 

Matt has been an elected member of the Board of Directors since 2016, and is based  in Tesla’s Christchurch office.

Nebiyou Tsegaye

Engineer

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Nebiyou joined Tesla in 2020 and has 5 years’ experience in the New Zealand power industry.  This includes primary and secondary systems design and project management for Transmission and Distribution clients. 

He has also prepared preliminary studies for protection relay and RTU upgrades at substations.

Nebiyou is based in Tesla’s Wellington Office.

Richard Whiteman

Senior Engineer

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Joining Tesla in 2021, Richard has over 25 years experience in the New Zealand Electrical industry. After 10 years in the HV substations and generation sectors, Richard spent a period in industrial electrical design before returning to join Tesla.

With extensive experience in design and project management, Richard is a key member of our generation and substation team.

Richard is based in Tesla’s Auckland office.

Russell Cathcart

Senior Engineer

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Joining Tesla in 2017, with over 11 years experience as a consulting engineer in the New Zealand Electrical Industry, during his career Russell has worked extensively across power generation, transmission, and distribution fields.

During his 15 years in the industry he has gained significant experience in design and project management, working on a broad range of projects covering a range of voltages including HV grid connections and substations, MV plant reticulation and LV plant auxiliaries.

Russell is based in Tesla’s Hamilton office

Stuart Rose

Project Manager

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Stuart is a Project Manager with over twenty-five years’ experience in electrical engineering and project management including 11 years in power generation and distribution plus 6 years project managing HV and LV switchboard solutions for multiple industry clients.

Stuart has broad experience within the New Zealand electricity industry, having worked on many projects, both from within the owning utility company and as a contracted resource.  

Stuart is based in Tesla’s Auckland office.

Tim Crawley

Principal Engineer

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Tim has over twenty years experience with Tesla specialising in substation primary and secondary design works, network modeling and network optimization.   Prior to joining Tesla Tim held positions at Southpower (now called Orion), King Country Energy and DesignPower.

Tim joined Tesla in 1997 and has been an elected member of the Board of Directors since 2002.

Tim is based in Tesla’s Wellington office.

Tyler Patterson

Graduate Engineer

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Tyler joined Tesla in November 2019 after completing his final year of electrical engineering at the University of Canterbury with a minor in power systems. His selected courses allowed him to develop technical knowledge in renewable energy design, power quality, power electronics, embedded systems design and electric machines.

Tyler has been involved in a wide  range of projects a Tesla, across Transmission, Generation and Distribution clients.  He has also gained significant experience of earthing testing and studies.

Tyler is based in Tesla’s Hamilton office.

Gary Middlemiss

Principal Engineer

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Gary has worked in the New Zealand electricity industry since 1982.

He commenced with NZED in substation construction specialising in telecommunications for 8 years till 1990. He then moved to ECNZ for the Waikato hydro automation project and specialised in generation automation systems with Mighty River Power until 2003.

Following this period Gary accepted an IT management role for Mighty River Power with an extensive IT portfolio including telecommunications and SCADA systems. 

Gary joined Tesla Consultants early 2005, and is based in Tesla’s Hamilton office.

Garry Rodgers

Principal Engineer

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A highly experienced senior engineer, Garry joined Tesla in 2018 bringing with him over 40 years’ in the NZ electricity industry.  

Garry’s career commenced with the New Zealand Electricity Department.  After returning to New Zealand from a period with the Far East Broadcasting Association in Seychelles Garry took up a Design Engineer role with DesignPower New Zealand.

Garry joined Tesla following 26 years as a Director/Senior Design Engineer with Rodgers White Limited, and is based in Tesla’s Christchurch office.

Karla Smith

Principal Engineer

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Karla joined Tesla in 2018, following nine years working in the industry.

Karla has experience in investigation, costings, solution study reports, design, and installation specifications for power systems communications and control equipment. This work includes commissioning programmes to ensure minimal service outages -particularly important under complex site conditions, or where other projects and/or consulting companies impact installation.

Karla is based in Tesla’s Christchurch Office.

Mark Macdonald

Principal Engineer

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Joining Tesla in 2019, with over 40 years experience in the industry, Mark specialises in Power Station control systems.
His experience includes comms and hardware and software design, programming, commissioning and maintenance of control systems and installation and commissioning of Hydro Generation sub-systems such as digital governors, AVRs and protection.

Mark is based in Tesla’s Hamilton Office.

Mark Mullins

Principal Engineer

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Mark has over 20 years’ experience in the New Zealand electricity industry. He commenced his career as Power System Automation contractor to ECNZ; and specialises in Control System integration and maintenance. 

Mark has extensive experience in the Control and instrumentation of power station environments, with much of this in the Geothermal industry.

Joining Tesla in 2006 Mark has been an elected member of the Board of Directors since 2020, and is based in Tesla’s Hamilton office.

Reece Peters

Senior Engineer

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Reece has been involved in the NZ electricity and telecommunications industries in a technical capacity since 1985. Reece has extensive experience in telecommunications network operations management, and as a design engineer within communication network environments.

He has in depth experience with a wide range of communications network management systems, and transmission equipment, aggregating node systems and record keeping as a level 1 and 2 transport engineer.

Reece is based in Tesla’s Hamilton Office.

Rob Walker

Senior Engineer

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Rob has been involved in the NZ electricity and telecommunications industries since 1982.

He began his career with NZED as an Electrical Draughting Cadet primarily involved with hydro-electric
power stations and substations.

At the completion of cadetship in 1986 he retrained as a telecommunications technician at the Whakamaru Transmission System control, spending 13 years in this field orientated technical role contracting to Transpower, generation and distribution companies and telecommunication industry clients.

Rob has significant experience with design, installation, configuration, maintenance, fault diagnosis of PLC, RTU and SCADA equipment.

Rob is based in Tesla’s Hamilton Office.

Alan Wallace

Business Development Manager

Principal Engineer

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After training in telecommunications with the NZ Post Office, Alan joined NZED at the North Island Control Centre in 1979. Alan specialised in telecommunications and SCADA control for NZED, then  with ECNZ and Mighty River Power, including a period as IT manager. Alan joined Tesla Consultants in 2001 as a Consulting Engineer specialising in Telecommunications and Control systems.

Moving to management, Alan was appointed Managing Director in 2016, serving 4 years before stepping sideways to his current role as Business Development Manager for Tesla.

Alan’s lengthy career includes authoring many design standards and strategic reviews for telecommunication and control systems, and he continues to assist clients in these roles.

Alan is based in Tesla’s Hamilton Office.

Ian Powlesland

Principal Engineer

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Ian has spent the last 30 years working primarily in the power industry, joining Tesla in 2020 to lead the setup of a new Civil/ Structural team within Tesla. 

Ian’s specialties include structural design of foundations and support structures, seismic analysis and strengthening of supports and foundations, civil site works and tower foundation analysis (including communications masts). 

Ian is based in Tesla’s Wellington Office.

Ian is currently leading the recruitment and training drive to build up Tesla’s Civil and Structural team.

Anjana Arul

Graduate Engineer

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Anjana joined Tesla in mid-2021 as Civil & Structural Engineer (Graduate). Her aim is to always create sustainable designs and construction practices.

Anjana has prior experience working as a Procurement Specialist for the oil and gas construction Industry. Anjana’s role with Tesla is with the structural design of foundations and the seismic analysis of substation structures and foundations.

Anjana is based in Tesla’s Wellington office.

Alex Wood

Draughtsperson

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Alex joined Tesla in 2020 as a Junior Draughtsperson providing draughting services to substation, switchyard, telecommunications, and control system designs.

Alex recently completed an apprenticeship and gained electrical registration in early 2020, providing him detailed insights into the detail needed for design information.

Alex is based in Tesla’s Hamilton Office.

Dhiren Panchani

Draughtsperson

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Dhiren joined Tesla in 2020 as a Junior Draughtsperson providing draughting services to substation, switchyard, telecommunications, and control system designs. He is rapidly gaining good design draughting experience across the full range of Tesla’s client requirements.

Dhiren is based in Tesla’s Hamilton Office.

Frances Bouter

Draughtsperson

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Frances joined Tesla in early 2019 as a Junior Draughtsperson and now handles a wide range of Design Draughting tasks for substation, switchyard, telecommunications, and control system designs to Transmission, Distribution and Generation clients.

Frances is based in Tesla’s Christchurch Office.

John Wraight

Senior Design Draughtsperson

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John commenced his career with NZED and continued through DesignPower and ECNZ.  After 11 years of self-employment service providing power station, substation, switchyard and control systems drawings and design for Transmission, Distribution and Generation companies, he joined Tesla in 2006 as a senior member of Tesla’s draughting team. 

John has now spent over 38 years in the electricity industry providing design draughting and engineering services across this wide range of aspects.

John is based in Tesla’s Christchurch Office.

John Esnaola

Senior Design Draughtsperson

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John has been involved in the New Zealand and Australian electricity industry since 2009. He has provided design draughting services for high voltage, power generation and distribution to infrastructure and industry clients.

John has extensive experience with AutoCAD, specialising in the use of 3D draughting tools, LISP and Script applications. He has worked with a wide range of client drawing standards.

Over the last few years John has been heavily involved with managing design draughting for clients in the distribution sector.

John is based in Tesla’s Auckland Office.

Nick Lessing

Senior Design Draughtsperson

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Nick has over 10 year’s draughting experience within the electric industry and Joined Tesla Consultants in 2013 providing substation, switchyard, telecommunications, and control system designs to Transmission, Distribution and Generation companies.

Previous roles with others as a CAD Operator gave Nick experience in producing circuit diagrams, panel layouts and switchyard arrangement drawings, AutoCAD, creating manufacturing drawings for fabrication and converting Solid Works 3D drawings into 2D Drawings using AutoCAD.  In recent years Nick has gained extensive experience with 3D drawing tools.

Nick is based in Tesla’s Hamilton Office.

Paul Rowland

Senior Design Draughtsperson

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Paul is one of the most experienced members of our Draughting Team, joining Tesla in 1994 and has over 36 years in the electricity industry. 

Paul’s experience includes the preparation of design drawings, for the modification of existing, and installation of new equipment, protection and communications circuits, for Transmission, Distribution and Generation companies.

Paul is based in Tesla’s Hamilton Office.

Wendy Bouter

Senior Design Draughtsperson

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Joining Tesla in 2012, Wendy came to Tesla with previous experience in circuit, panel layout and switchyard arrangement drawings – amending and producing new drawings using AutoCAD. 

Wendy also has experience using AutoCAD drawing land subdivision resource consent application plans, land transfer plans and engineering design/ As-Built plans.

Wendy currently provides draughting services for substation, switchyard, telecommunications and control system designs to Transmission, Distribution and Generation companies. She is extremely proficient in converting our engineer’s sketches into drawings such as circuit diagrams, wiring diagrams, panel layouts,
equipment/site layouts, installation details and SLD/Relay diagrams.

Wendy is based in Tesla’s Hamilton Office.

Zane Murphy - Ballantine

Draughtsperson

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Joining Tesla in early 2021, Zane has three years’ experience in the NZ Electrical Industry. 

He has good experience providing draughting services across a number of clients for substation, switchyard, telecommunications, and control system designs.

Zane is based in Tesla’s Auckland Office.

Bevan Cooper

Senior Engineer

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Bevan came to the electricity industry with a background in aeronautical engineering, information systems development, and acoustics, courtesy of 10 years with the Royal New Zealand Air Force and the New Zealand Aluminium Smelter.

Joining PowerNet as a senior Network Assets Engineer in 2012, after six years at this customer end of substation design, Bevan joined Tesla in 2018 ready to use the experience gained in those years of project scoping, design reviews, and project management as a consultant designer of secondary and protection systems.

Bevan has wide experience in the design of complex secondary systems and protection and the undertaking of co-ordination studies.

Bevan is based in Tesla’s Christchurch office.

Brent Cathie

Technical Director

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Brent has more than 30 years’ experience in the electricity industry, with a focus on a power system protection since 1995. Joined Tesla in 1998, with a one-year sabbatical with SEL in Pullman, USA during 2000/2001.

He has undertaken key roles carrying out relay evaluations and developing protection standard designs for Transpower and assisted a number of distribution companies in the development and implementation of their protection philosophies

Chris O'Halloran

Principal Engineer

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Joining Tesla in 2005, Chris is a highly versatile Protection Engineer. His experience includes network design; transformers, asset management, probabilistic planning techniques, voltage control, RCM maintenance programs, load flow modelling, fault studies. Chris has strong experience with investigations regarding mutual coupling, recloser design.

Chris has presented papers at several regional and national EEA conferences winning best paper for a non-EEA member in 2015. 

Chris is based Tesla’s Hamilton Office

David Collins

Technical Director

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David is a highly experienced senior consulting engineer with over 45 year’s experience in the electricity industry.

Commencing his career with New Zealand Electricity in 1972 (subsequently Electricity Division of Ministry of Energy) and specialising in power systems protection engineering since 1981, David joined Tesla in 2003.

David is based in Tedsla’s Christchurch Office.

David Harris

Technical Director

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David commenced his career with DesignPower in 1991 and joined Tesla in 1996 in a power systems engineer role, performing all aspects of engineering, with emphasis on power system protection since 2000.

With over 30 years of experience in the industry now, David often handles our more complex protection projects, mostly for Distribution companies.

David is based in Tesla’s Hamilton office.

David Newlands

Technical Director

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David commenced his career with NZE on substation design. He joined Transpower in 1990 as a Protection Engineer, spending 2 years in the System Planning group in mid 1990s, as well as a further 2 years in 2003/04.

During his time in Transpower, David was involved with many aspects of protection design, settings, standards and policy development, evaluation of new relays, and asset management.

David joined Tesla Consultants in 2005. Since then he has been leading designer on many protection related projects, and standard designs and policies

Eileen Ma

Senior Engineer

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Eileen is a power systems protection engineer with over 22 years consulting experience in New Zealand. She has worked on projects in the Generation, Transmission and Distribution systems with clients in New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Her key skills include protection settings calculation and applications, power system modelling, secondary circuit design and protection philosophy and schematics design. Eileen is an experienced user of DigSILENT and SINCAL software.

Eileen is based in Tesla’s Auckland office.

Hamish Moore

Engineer

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After a lengthy period working as an HV Power Technician in the electrical transmission environment, Hamish joined Tesla in early 2020 to train as a Protection Engineer.

He has undertaken a wide variety of projects ranging from CT/VT Replacements to Protection and RTU replacements and upgrades.

With over 11 years of experience in the New Zealand Electrical Industry, Hamish brings with him valuable experience across planned maintenance / condition assessment reporting and evaluation of client asset conditions, based on test results.

Hamish is based in Tesla’s Hamilton office.

Jeremy Coote

Technical Director

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Jeremy has over 40 years’ experience in the electric power industry, commencing with NZED/Designpower before gaining further experience overseas then returning to New Zealand.

Jeremy joined Tesla in 2002, and his extensive generation experience is scond-to-note, including carrying out station plant and protection audits at over 30 power stations, as well as protection upgrades for over 100 generators across New Zealand and Australia.

Julien Arts

Senior Engineer

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Joining Tesla in 2018, Julien is a chartered professional engineer with over 10 years’ experience in generation and transmission.

Specialising in Generator related aspects, Julien has extensive experience with protection, governors, excitation and control system design, review and modelling.  Generators involved include hydro, geothermal, wind and solar.

Julien is based in Tesla’s Christchurch office.

Maik Ufferhardt

Senior Engineer

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Joining Tesla in early 2019, Maik came to us with 11 years’ New Zealand experience in Commissioning and Maintenance of Primary, Secondary and SCADA systems, HV Applications, Transmission Fault incident Analysis, Human Error Incident Analysis, Protection Design reviews, Power Transformer diagnostics, IEC61850 and Earth testing.

In addition to this Maik had 6 years’ experience in Germany and Austria in Low to Medium Voltage networks, specialising in testing and commissioning of MV protection systems and Test Automation development.

Joining Tesla to train as a Protection Design Engineer, Maik has gained wide experience across Transmission and Distribution protection requirements.

Maik is based in Tesla’s Wellington office.

Marina Smith

Senior Engineer

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Marina has 19 years of experience within the industry. Commencing her career with New Zealand Aluminium Smelters, Marina has since held various Protection Engineer positions with Transpower, Beca and AECOM.

Joining Tesla in June 2020, Marina has an interest in renewable energy having worked on protection projects for wind and solar energy.

Marina is based in Tesla’s Wellington office.

Nick Bowe

Engineer

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Joining Tesla in 2020, Nick has been involved in the NZ electricity industry since 1997 and has worked in protection roles at Vector, HV Power and Unison Networks.

His experience includes preparing conceptual designs, carrying out settings coordination studies, developing templates for IED settings and incident investigation.

Nick has extensive experience in providing equipment-specific technical training, and in-service communications diagnosis of IEC61850 and DNP3 protocols.

Nick is based in Tesla’s Auckland office.

Peng-Hon Kim

Principal Engineer

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Joining Tesla Consultants in July 2001, Kim is a highly experienced and respected Protection and Control engineer with more than 21 years’ experience in the New Zealand electricity supply industry. 

Kim has broad experience covering the Transmissional and Distribution markets, including carrying out coordination studies and design for a large number of major substation upgrade projects.

Kim is based in Tesla’s Hamilton office.

Pieter Van Dyk

Principal Engineer

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Joining Tesla in 2010, Pieter has over 16 years of experience in the New Zealand electricity industry.

Pieter is often involved in Tesla’s more complex Protection engagements.  His experience includes the analysis of Transmission and Distribution power system protection; protection and network modelling; secondary systems protection and IEC61850 GOOSE messaging designs, settings and bench testing; feasibility studies; technical specifications and performance analysis of existing installations. 

Pieter is based in Tesla’s Hamilton office.