Braden Olson is a Principal Protection and Automation engineer who has more than 15 years of hands-on electric utility experience. Before joining Tesco, he worked as a Senior Engineering consultant for GE, providing protection and automation consulting engineering services for transmission, distribution and generation customers. He acted as lead consultant and key account manager for major utility customers in the Western United States and specialized in digital substation projects.

Before becoming a consultant, Braden worked at two different utilities. He worked for almost 7 years at Southern California Edison (SCE), in Advanced Technology, where he was responsible for research and development of new substation protection and automation technology. This included developing, piloting and standardizing SCE’s next generation substation automation system based around IEC 61850. He also has extensive experience and knowledge about SCE’s protection and automation standards and design. Before SCE, Braden worked at Salt River Project (SRP) for almost 7 years, in the system protection and control engineering areas. At SRP, Braden worked on several major projects, including designing and commissioning one of the largest Remedial Action Schemes (RAS) in the western United States. Braden has extensive utility experience related to system protection, substation automation, IEC 61850, substation design and commissioning.

Braden received his Bachelors of Science in Electrical Engineering degree from Montana State University. He is a Professional Engineer in the state of California.