Humans of Electrification: Sujit Mandal, Amazon
“When I was 10 years old I was something of the local electrician in my neighborhood.
“My father was an electrical engineer in India who worked setting up power plants. The phone would ring about a problem at one of the plants, and I would answer and say, ‘Send a car and my father will fix it.’ I was his dispatcher.
“People would ask my parents if I could fix an electrical problem they were having, say a blown fuse or a broken heating coil on a cook stove. I came to understand how electricity works mainly from my father.
“Later, at university, I won an award for an undergraduate project that simulated large electric power flows. You can solve small power system problems with pen and paper, but when the problem gets large—when you are talking 10 generators and multiple hundreds of transmission lines connected to hundreds of loads of demand—that is where you need a simulation. We came up with a software toolbox. My work was used to help other students understand how these types of complex power flows work.
“Near the end of my studies one of my professors asked if I would be interested in continuing my studies in the U.S. I said I would, and was accepted at Kansas State University. As a graduate student, I had to learn how to live on $600 or $700 a month.
“My friends and I had to go to the Walmart for shopping and then come back with big bags and we’d think, ‘Oh, should we take a cab for five bucks or should we just walk?’ We used to walk quite a bit.
“The happiest day was when a friend and I bought a used car for $300. We drove all around town and went to the store for groceries. We spread its benefit by helping our friends go to the store.
“I went to work as a senior staff engineer for Entergy in New Orleans. My wife was doing her residency, we had a two-year-old daughter and I decided to pursue my executive MBA from Columbia. Every two weeks I would fly to New York for a weekend of classes and then fly back for my job and family and to do my homework. My wife still asks, why in the world did I think to do my MBA at that time?
“When I came to the U.S. in 1997, India’s electrification rate was 54.6%. The remaining almost 45% did not have access to electricity. India has done great work, and has enjoyed great upward mobility. Today, the electrification rate is 99.6%, and all that has happened in the last 25 years.
“I truly believe that electrification is one of the foundations for society. Globally, about 780 million people don't have any access at all to electricity. So, as these people gain access we have to work in parallel toward decarbonization.”
Sujit Mandal is Head of Power Demand Management at Amazon. He earlier was Executive Director of Transmission and Distribution at EPRI.
Meet more electrification-minded people at EPRI’s Electrification 2024 International Conference Exhibition, next March 12-14 in Savannah. Register now: https://lnkd.in/eHTyC3EX
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Image: EPRI