When Sebastiaan van Loon (27) completed his programme in electrical engineering in 2005, he had relatively little knowledge of energy technology. After spending six months working for an Australian company that installs gas turbines, he was given a job at Nuon Tecno where he is part of the Technical Talent Programme (TTP). “This gives me the chance to learn as much as I can about the energy world in a short space of time.”

‘The good thing about the Technical Talent Programme is that you devise your own training path’, says Sebastiaan. “It’s not a traineeship with a fixed programme of courses. I’ve got my own workplace, where I join in with the real work in the department.”

Energy security is part of Nuon Tecno’s remit. “If a cherry picker touches a high-voltage cable, you have to be able to switch off the power in the network quickly otherwise the consequences could be very serious. But you have to do this selectively, because you don’t want half of the Netherlands to be without power.”

Sebastiaan is now working on ‘flickering’. “This is a brief peak load on the network. If the washing machine is on in a student’s room at the same time as two computers and the vacuum cleaner, you may notice that the lights start to flicker. The same thing can happen with a welding machine. It suddenly consumes a lot of power from the network. I’m trying to digitalize the readings for this type of flickering in the energy network.”

Being on the TTP means that Sebastiaan can devote a lot of his work time to his own personal development. “If I want to do a consultancy course because I think it will benefit my future within the company, I simply ask and it’s usually okay. But you have to arrange everything yourself.”