Veterans in Advanced Energy Profile: Justin Lau

justin lau, 2020-2021 Veterans advanced energy fellow. click the button below to learn more about the fellowship.

Justin Lau, a 2020-2021 Veterans Advanced Energy Fellow, joined the Air Force for an education in technology. He is now working to improve US national security by modernizing the grid and ensuring reliable energy infrastructure. To other veterans, he says to follow your passion and use your leadership skills to create your own opportunities. As told to Leah Emanuel.

Why did you join the military and what was your role?

It was a combination of personal interest in the military, a feeling of duty, a desire to give back, and it really made sense financially. School was paid for because I was recruited to play tennis at the US Air Force Academy. I’ve also always been fascinated by the competitiveness of the military. Much like in the world of sports, you have to out-strategize, out-train, and out-execute an opponent. Another part of it is that I grew up in an immigrant family. I have an older brother who went to West Point and served in the US Army. For us, it was kind of a way we could give back to the country that took our family in. 

I was a pilot in the US Air Force. I flew the E3 AWACS, which stands for Airborne Warning and Control System. It’s basically a flying air traffic control center that specializes in managing large-scale air wars. The technical nature of the Air Force was really a draw for me. I didn’t necessarily set out to be a pilot, but I thought the Air Force was really neat because of the technology they work with. I was interested in becoming an engineer, so whether it was airplanes or rockets or cybersecurity, the Air Force had plenty of opportunities to work with technology.

LAU at Vance Air force base in Enid, Oklahoma in 2008 During pilot training

How did the military influence your career trajectory into energy?

I studied electrical engineering for my undergrad which gave me a technical background. As a pilot, I put my engineering aside for a little while. After flying for a handful of years, I decided that I was ready to be an engineer again and enrolled in a masters in engineering with Purdue University. It was a generalist program so you could choose which classes you wanted to take across their entire curriculum, and I started following my curiosity.

I took a class in electric mechanics which turned out to be about power generation and the power grid. I ended up learning a lot about wind turbines and the aspirations to build an “intelligent” smart grid. That’s when I realized how I took energy for granted. You walk into a room and you can turn on the lights to see better, you can turn on the AC to be more comfortable, and you can turn on your TV to be more knowledgeable. All of these things only worked if there were people in the world that understood the technology I was learning about. Without power systems engineers, the world would descend back into darkness.

In the military, you often live in environments where you don’t have those kinds of luxuries. In training and deployed environments, you don’t always have access to power—you live in tents where there’s no air conditioning and you don’t have lights so you have to use flashlights. The military trains you to operate in these conditions, but it also makes you appreciate when we do have access to power. The combination of my studies and military training sparked an interest in me to understand what goes into making the modern world work.

What are you most excited about in advanced energy developments, and what are you most concerned about?

I’m excited by a lot of the technological advancements happening in the power grid right now, specifically managing the transition to renewables and the smart grid. My company is designing a grid that is more adaptive. The traditional power grid was originally designed very rigidly and structured. Power could only flow one-way from power plants to commercial, industrial, and residential consumption centers. What we are designing now is a grid equipped with enough flexibility and computing to intelligently respond to real-time changes in the grid. These capabilities are important to ensuring the reliable transition towards renewable energy, the onboarding of energy storage solutions, allowing individuals to participate in the energy markets by selling energy back to the grid, and creating a more resilient power infrastructure. These changes are enabling unprecedented innovation in the advanced energy space, and it’s honestly very exciting stuff.    

These capabilities are important to ensuring the reliable transition towards renewable energy, the onboarding of energy storage solutions, allowing individuals to participate in the energy markets by selling energy back to the grid, and creating a more resilient power infrastructure.

Why is energy important to U.S. national security?

LAU At Al Dhafra Air Base in the UAE in 2011

Energy is what we use to power all of society. You can’t do anything without energy. Before electricity, we used horses, livestock, and rivers as sources of energy. Since then, we’ve created technology to harness new forms of energy as the backbone of society. Seeing city lights at night from an airplane is one of the most spectacular views, but more importantly the pattern of lights shows the outline of the city, where the developments are, and where energy is being consumed. You can gauge how developed an area is based on how much energy they consume and how much access to energy they have. When it comes to security, our energy supplies, and our ability to distribute energy across the country, I don’t know what could be more important from a societal perspective. Energy is an underpinning of everything that we do in society. 

Do you have advice you would like to share with other veterans?

Follow your passion. I know that’s cliché but it’s still relevant when you leave the military. Most people coming out of the military are looking to redefine themselves—what you did in the military is not necessarily what you want to do your whole life. You have to do some soul-searching to know what you want to do. There are career opportunities in anything that you want to do and if you’re creative enough about it, you can make your own opportunities in a space that really interests you. Figure out how to join the ecosystem if there is one or go create one. Be the leader that you’re trained to be and create the movement for people who share the same vision and the same passion that you do. 

What is your greatest take-away from the Veterans Advanced Energy Fellowship? 

The takeaway for me is that there are a lot of really smart people who are working on a lot of really hard problems. This creates a tremendous opportunity for those that are interested in hopping in the arena because it requires a lot of really smart people to make these visions a reality. I view advanced energy as a giant playground you can play in. It’s been fun being a part of the fellowship and being a part of the thinking side—it will be equally as fun working on the actual implementation side. There is more than one way to protect our way of life—creating a resilient, sustainable, and reliable energy infrastructure is a great way to do that. I can’t reiterate enough how much opportunity there is and how much promise there is, especially if you believe in the vision of what’s going on right now in advanced energy.

There is more than one way to protect our way of life—creating a resilient, sustainable, and reliable energy infrastructure is a great way to do that.