Joshua Van Rynbach

7.30 AM

I am not a morning person, I struggle out of bed, have a quick shower, and get ready for work. I like to prepare my lunches for the week on a Sunday night and freeze them. I find this very convenient, and I can grab a lunch I’ve left out overnight to defrost and take it to work.

8.00 AM

I arrive at the office and make sure to pay the entry tax to one of the residents.

Upon entering the office, I will head upstairs to my desk; I usually leave my laptop at work so I can just sit down and get started. I check my emails and calendar for the day, making a mental note of any meetings scheduled. Depending on how much work I’ve got on the previous day I may have made notes on what I need to prioritise today, and I’ll begin on that.

8.30 AM

After a quick stint of work, I’ll head to the closest kitchen to make a coffee and grab some fruit out of our free fruit bowls, I’ll bring this back to my desk and continue working.

My current rotation sees me in the Business Development team, where I have been given as a resource to Base Power, who make stand-alone power systems (SAPS). The current project I’m in is for the design of a portable solar array, I am in charge at making some electrical design decisions in order for the product to meet some requirements and ensure the design is safe and complies to local standards.

9.30 AM

The Powerco office in New Plymouth is in a nice section of native bush, and commonly on nice days you will see groups of people walking around the perimeter of the office. The graduates like to go for a walk in the morning to get the blood flowing, and getting away from my desk is a nice way to rejuvenate when I’m having difficulty with some work or if I’m stuck on a problem. 

10.00 AM

Back to work – I’m currently scrapping electrical vendors to find a suitable connector for the portable solar array, there are some interesting requirements that mean a common part will not satisfy them. If I can’t find a suitable part I need to problem solve and come up with an appropriate solution that will work.

12.00 PM

Lunch time – I enjoy lunch with colleagues in one of the breakrooms, we like to complete the code cracker puzzles out of the newspapers provided in the breakroom, along with discussions around some of the current events in the paper.

12.30 PM

I get back to my desk and get into my PPE, I’m heading out to Opunake GXP with a protection engineer to witness some switchgear stability testing. This is just an opportunity for me to get out to site, I’m not required to understand fully what is going on, but I had a decent idea of what they were testing.

1.15 PM

We arrive at site, and the foreman runs us over the site induction and health and safety before we sign onto site. The Protection techs have the equipment set up and have already begun a few tests to start proofing that everything is set up correctly.

This new 33kV switchboard is part of an outdoor indoor (ODID) conversion project, and the testing today is to confirm that the differential protection on all the relays is stable. This is achieved by injecting current into the switchboard from certain points to simulate normal and fault conditions and looking at the trip signals and logic on the relays during these conditions.

During the testing of the bus coupler differential element, the protection tech disabled the differential protection with a switch on the front panel. A test current was injected so the differential element threshold was met, and I was allowed to flip the switch back on, tripping the 33kV circuit breaker.

After a couple of hours looking at some of the test results to confirm they are okay, we head back to the office. On the way back we make sure to fill up the car, as we borrowed it from a line designer and don’t want it to be empty next time they drive it.

4.00 - 4.30 PM

Once back at the office I get out of my PPE and hop back on my laptop quickly to have a check of any emails that came through while I was out on site. I roughly plan out some work that needs my attention the next day, before packing up and heading home.

On my way out of the office I like to stop and talk to people, I am currently in my fourth rotation, so I know a lot of people in other teams across the business that I like to catch up as I leave.

4.40 PM

Once I get home, I open the house to let my flat mate’s animals roam around

A few days a week after work I’ll head out for a run, I find this helps me clear my head and keep me fit. I live close to a track that follows a river out to the New Plymouth coastline, which has some amazing sunsets. On clear days I can also get some awesome views of Mt Taranaki.

6.30 PM 

Any chores or errands I have I try to get done before I have dinner, I only need to cook for myself so can be flexible, but I aim to always have it between 6 and 7pm. I try to only cook a meal once every few nights but make a few portions which I can save for the next day or two. This gives me more free time in the evenings to relax; most nights I like to jump in a call to catch up with friends and play some video games

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