Bai K. Blyden is an electrical engineer by profession and founder of the Strategic Consulting Group BBRM.
He has over the last 34 years contributed his expertise to over forty major and minor power plant projects and their associated interconnections around the world.
These included detailed power plant and transmission systems design engineering, systems and operations planning, project development feasibility assessment oversight and construction management.
Among his more notable assignments, Mr Blyden served as Project Manager on the Calpine team, which planned a 70,000 MW development programme which included EPC oversight.
Within this scope, he also served as a Site Construction Manager for the Emergency Peaker Programme which constructed and commissioned eleven (11x45MW) general electric simple cycle gas turbine units in response to California executive order D-26-01 issued to protect the grid around Silicon Valley at the peak of the 2001 California energy crisis.
Mr Blyden has also worked on large nuclear, hydro and mid to small distributed energy systems having held senior technical consulting and staff positions with various utilities, AE and Manufacturing firms such as TVA; Pacific Gas & Electric; Bechtel, ABB, Cummins, The New York Power Authority, Texas Utilities.
He is currently completing the updates on the electrical systems computer models for the 2x940MW Plant Hatch power station at Southern Company as part of the Calculations Design Basis Validation Programme for Configuration Management and Post Fukushima retrofits.
An early advocate of an Integrated African Grid, Mr Blyden has presented a conceptual framework and technical analysis for a centralised African Power pool with links to North Africa at the first IEEE Region 8 conference held in Nairobi, Kenya, December 1983. Since then, he has authored several papers on African Energy Development with a particular emphasis on the strategic role of Regional Power Pool Interconnections, Micro Grids and Knowledge development. Towards this end, he has developed The African Power Development Knowledge Engine which is an advanced training and development conceptual framework designed to harness the dynamic results created by linking African technical colleges and universities to current international R&D focused on Power.
Mr Blyden earned an MS.EE from Moscow Energetics Institute in Power Systems, Generation and Industrial Distribution Systems, and has been awarded numerous professional development certifications and accreditations. Fluent in multiple languages which include English, French, Russian, Spanish and Arabic, Mr Blyden brings a multicultural mindset and an exceptional relationship building acumen.
He is a Senior Member of the IEEE and serves as Chair of the IEEE PES International Practices subcommittee for Africa.
He serves as a Senior Advisor to Centric Ltd, a commercial startup with 21st century structurally advanced and sustainable green building systems.