Steven Sim

Dr. Steven Sim has worked in the field of energy analysis since the mid-1970s. He graduated from the University of Miami (Florida) with bachelor's and master's degrees in mathematics in 1973 and 1975, respectively. He then earned a doctorate in environmental science and engineering from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1979 with an emphasis on energy. During his doctoral work, Dr. Sim also completed an internship of approximately a year and a half at the Florida Solar...See more

Dr. Steven Sim has worked in the field of energy analysis since the mid-1970s. He graduated from the University of Miami (Florida) with bachelor's and master's degrees in mathematics in 1973 and 1975, respectively. He then earned a doctorate in environmental science and engineering from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1979 with an emphasis on energy. During his doctoral work, Dr. Sim also completed an internship of approximately a year and a half at the Florida Solar Energy Center (FSEC), a research arm of Florida's state university system located in Merritt Island, Florida, near Cape Canaveral. His work at FSEC involved an examination of consumers' experience with solar water heaters and projections of the potential for renewable energy in the Southeastern United States. In 1979, Dr. Sim joined Florida Power & Light Company (FPL), a subsidiary of NextEra Energy, Inc. FPL is one of the largest electric utilities in the United States. In the more than 40 years from 1979 to the time the 2nd edition of this book is being written, FPL has experienced tremendous population growth in the geographic area it serves. Annual average growth has been roughly 74,000 net new customer accounts per year during that period. With each customer account representing approximately 2.5 people, this represents a growth of approximately 185,000 more people per year that FPL needed to serve. Therefore, the growth that FPL had to keep up with was roughly equivalent to 1 million new people every 5.4 years. Few, if any, other electric utilities have had to face the challenges inherent in meeting continued growth of this magnitude over such an extended time. This extraordinary growth, combined with the planning issues that all utilities face including changing environmental regulations, fuel decisions, modification/retirement of existing generating units, changes in generating technologies, etc., ensured that FPL's planning efforts have addressed a wide variety of resource planning challenges. During that time, Dr. Sim has had several roles in regard to FPL's resource planning efforts. He spent approximately the first 10 years of his career at FPL designing a number of FPL's demand side management (DSM) programs. One of these, the Passive Home Program, earned a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) award for innovation. Among the numerous other DSM programs he either designed or co-designed were the Conservation Water Heating Program (that featured heat pump and solar water heaters) and one of the nation's most successful load management programs (FPL's residential load control program, known as the On Call Program, has approximately 800,000 participating customers). In the course of designing these DSM programs, he became very interested in gaining a better understanding of how DSM programs affect FPL's entire utility system. Of particular interest were how FPL's DSM programs impacted the actual operation of FPL's generation, transmission, and distribution systems, including impacts on air emissions for the FPL system as a whole, and fuel usage by all of the power plants in FPL's system. This interest led to him joining FPL's System Planning Department in 1991. This department (since renamed the Integrated Resource Planning Department) is charged with determining when new resources should be added to the FPL system, the magnitude of the needed new resources, and what the best resources are for FPL to add to meet the continued growth in customers (and their demand for electricity), changing environmental laws, and other regulatory requirements. Dr. Sim has found this work to be challenging, continually evolving, and always interesting. Over this... See less