I am spending more time researching the Low Carbon Data Center ideas and I ran across Google's job posting on Renewable Energy System Modeling Engineer.

The role: Renewable Energy System Modeling Engineer - Mountain View

RE<'C will require development of new utility-scale energy production systems. But design iteration times for large-scale physical systems are notoriously slow and expensive. You will use your expertise in computer simulation and modeling to accelerate the design iteration time for renewable energy systems. You will build software tools and models of optical, mechanical, electrical, and financial systems to allow the team to rapidly answer questions and explore the design-space of utility-scale energy systems. You will draw from your broad systems knowledge and your deep expertise in software-based simulation. You will choose the right modeling environment for each problem-from simple spreadsheets to time-based simulators to custom software models you create in high-level languages. The models you create will be important software projects unto themselves. You will follow Google's world-class software development methodologies as you create, test, and maintain these models. You will build rigorous testing frameworks to verify that your models produce correct results. You will collaborate with other engineers to frame the modeling problem and interpret the results.

It's great Google see the need for this person, but I was curious if anyone else has done Renewable Energy System Modeling. Guess what there is, since 1993 in fact. NREL has this page on Homer.

New Distribution Process for NREL's HOMER Model

Note! HOMER is now distributed and supported by HOMER Energy (www.homerenergy.com)

To meet the renewable energy industry’s system analysis and optimization needs , NREL started developing HOMER in 1993. Since then it has been downloaded free of charge by more than 30,000 individuals, corporations, NGOs, government agencies, and universities worldwide.

HOMER is a computer model that simplifies the task of evaluating design options for both off-grid and grid-connected power systems for remote, stand-alone, and distributed generation (DG) applications. HOMER's optimization and sensitivity analysis algorithms allow the user to evaluate the economic and technical feasibility of a large number of technology options and to account for uncertainty in technology costs, energy resource availability, and other variables. HOMER models both conventional and renewable energy technologies:

I signed up for the Homer Energy site which has 510 users, non apparently Google engineers.

I hope to make contact with the Homer Energy team as we are trying to have a session at DataCenterDynamics Seattle on a Low Carbon Data Center.

Maybe Google doesn't have to hire the Renewable Engineering System Modeling engineer after all. :-)