AWARDS FINALIST: Northpower's Brown 'delivering in the real world'

Northpower engineering and delivery general manager Shaun Brown is good at bridging the gap between complex engineering theory and practical real-world delivery.

It's a skill that's stood him in good stead over the decade or so since he joined the Northland distributor and infrastructure company as an engineering graduate from Canterbury University.

And it's prompted the firm to nominate Brown for Young Energy Professional of the Year in this year's Energy Excellence Awards.

At the age of 34, Brown leads a team of 28 engineers, delivery specialists and technicians responsible for delivering the electricity infrastructure that underpins growth, resilience and electrification across Northland.

He also plays a key role in enabling more than 400 megawatts of renewable generation projects, leading the engineering, network studies and technical assessments needed to connect new renewable energy sources to the network.

Team

One of his most significant projects was acting as technical lead for the connection of Te Puna Mauri ō Omaru, Northland's first large-scale solar farm, at Ruawai, south of Dargaville.

Brown was responsible for designing a grid connection that maximised generation output while maintaining network security. The company says the work established a scalable approach for future distributed generation projects.

The solar farm is the first major project in its strategy to develop 100 megawatts of renewable generation capacity, enough to power more than 25,000 homes across the Whangārei and Kaipara regions.

Brown's responsibilities have also extended to major network reliability projects. When a routine inspection of 1109 kilovolt transmission lines between the Whangārei suburb of Kensington and Maungatapere west of the city showed a support tower was threatened by land subsidence, Brown led a team of experts in designing an innovative bypass on highly unstable ground.

Working closely with local hapū, consultants and contractors, he restored security of supply to 26,000 customers ahead of schedule.

The project involved constructing two temporary bypass lines on either side of Tower 29, providing redundancy so that power supply could be maintained if either route was compromised. Using standard distribution poles and readily available materials, the team restored security of supply as quickly as possible while a longer-term solution was developed..

Drones

Brown has led Northpower's move from traditional ground-based overhead line inspections to drone-based inspections, improving the quality of asset-condition information and allowing a full year of inspections to be completed in four months, as well as providing better data for engineering analysis and network planning.

He has taken a leadership role in Northpower's Lines Down Task Force, which uses smart-meter voltage and current data combined with analytics to identify potential fallen conductor incidents.

The system improves detection times for potentially hazardous events, particularly in rural areas where faults can remain undetected for extended periods, the firm says.

Brown is also active outside the company, through industry working groups and technical standards development.

He contributed to the Electricity Engineers' Association's Conductor Health Assessment guideline, published in 2024, helping develop a nationally consistent framework for conductor condition assessment and asset management decision-making, and has worked with the Department of Conservation on methods to allow network maintenance to occur while helping protect kauri from dieback disease.

Brown has provided expert evidence to the Environment Court on the issue.

In 2024, he received the Electricity Engineers' Association Professional Development Award, enabling him to attend CIRED 2025 in Geneva. On his return, he shared insights with the EEA Young Engineers Forum on future electricity network design, electrification and renewable integration.

In 2024, he was accepted into Northpower's talent development programme, aimed at supporting exceptional talent and up-and-coming leaders.

The annual Energy Excellence Awards will be held in Wellington on 19 August. The Young Energy Professional of the Year Award is sponsored by Elemental Group.