Photo By Petty Officer 1st Class Bryan Ilyankoff | Greg Brooks (center), chief of Maintenance Engineering, Operations Division, Walla Walla District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, is presented the Bronze de Fleury medal, a recognition presented to individuals who have rendered significant service or support to an element of the Engineer Regiment, during the Walla Walla District Corps Day, June 26, 2026. Nominated by Chad Rhynard (left), chief, Technical Support Branch, Operations Division, and presented by Lt. Col. Katie Werback, commander, Walla Walla District, Brooks has proven his recognition through various intitiavies, including the recent development of the GENQEJ generator modeling tool, a revised generator model which better preserves the accuracy of generator operating conditions. (U.S. Army photo by Bryan Ilyankoff) see less
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From grit to grid: USACE engineer aids power reliability across the Northwest
WALLA WALLA, Wash. —Long before he was helping improve generator modeling for the western power grid, Greg Brooks was growing up off the grid in Northern California.
His family homesteaded in the woods, relying on their own power system. As a child, Brooks learned by doing, helping with generators, solar equipment, inverters, and whatever else needed to work.
“You had to build stuff and make it work,” Brooks said. “That was just part of life.”
That hands-on mindset still shapes how he approaches engineering today.
Now, as Chief of Maintenance Engineering for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Walla Walla District, Brooks leads a team that provides technical support for the district’s operating projects across the Columbia and Snake River system. His team supports a wide range of functions, including engineering technical support, reliability and compliance, operational technology cybersecurity, dive and operational safety, asset management, data analysis, testing, and condition assessments.
Their work helps ensure the district’s generators are represented as accurately as possible in the models used to help maintain power grid reliability.
Brooks was recently recognized for work that may be invisible to most people but has a broad impact far beyond the dams where it starts and keeps the western power grid stable.
Across the western United States, utilities and grid operators rely on mathematical models to simulate how generators, transmission lines, substations, and other electrical components will behave under different conditions. Those models help planners and operators maintain reliability, especially when the grid is stressed.
Accuracy matters for hydropower generators like those operated by USACE.
“These models all work together to predict what happens when margins are thin,” Brooks said. “The better the model, the better the grid can plan.”
Brooks and his team were working with an older generator model that performed well in some ways, but industry changes required a transition to a newer model. The newer model better captured fast-changing conditions, but Brooks said it did not represent some steady-state operating conditions as accurately for the district’s type of generators.
In practical terms, that meant the model could be less precise in predicting how those generators would respond in certain parts of their normal operating range.
Rather than accept a less accurate fit for the district’s units, the team worked to develop an alternative.
Working with long-time industry experts, generator model developer Dr. John Undrill, and partners such as the Bureau of Reclamation and Bonneville Power Administration, Brooks helped advocate for and coordinate the development of a revised generator model that better preserved the accuracy his team needed while also meeting updated technical expectations.
Brooks said the work took years of persistence, including testing, coding, analysis, and repeated discussions with industry groups and software vendors. At one point, his team even had to write some of its own code to evaluate model implementation and demonstrate its performance in comparison with the existing alternatives.
“It probably took about two years of focused effort,” Brooks said, “and really longer than that if you include everything that led up to it.”
The result was the GENQEJ generator modeling tool, which was ultimately approved for use across the Western Interconnection. Ultimately, the effort helps planners and operators better understand how the system will respond during changing conditions.
For Brooks, the value is straightforward: “It’s better to be as accurate as reasonably possible.”
In 2010, Brooks joined the Walla Walla District’s Operations Division as a test and evaluation engineer after earlier work with the district’s Design Branch beginning in 2006. Before that, he worked on aircraft maintenance and fabrication, building and repairing smaller aircraft and working on instrumentation and panels.He earned his electrical engineering degree from Walla Walla University, but his interest in engineering started much earlier.
“I like making things, and I enjoyed math,” Brooks said. “I grew up playing with electronics and doing fabrication, so engineering became a good combination of those things.”
That mix of field experience and technical depth shows in the work he enjoys most.
Over the years, Brooks helped the district build in-house capability for generator model validation testing, work that had previously been done through contract support. He said the learning curve was steep, but the team collaborated with partners and built its own instrumentation and processes over time.
Today, that expertise stays within the district and is being passed on to the next generation.
Brooks said one of the most important parts of the work now is continuity, training others so the knowledge does not leave when careers change.
Brooks is quick to note that none of it happens alone. He pointed to teammates like Carlos Flores and Andrew Glencross, as well as those collaborations with external experts and agencies, as essential to the effort.
However, the determination to keep pushing until the problem is solved is unmistakably his.
“It’s probably a personality trait,” Brooks said with a laugh. “Maybe enhanced by growing up in the woods and having to survive on your own and build stuff and make it work.”
That mindset has helped produce engineering improvements which support reliability, strengthen technical capability, and reflect the quality of expertise which keeps complex public infrastructure working. And for Brooks, that is the part of the job that still stands out.
“Generator modeling is the most fun I’ve had in my career,” he said.
