Vanya Smythe

Engineer first. AI specialist second.

I started in electronics at Television New Zealand in 1987, moved into power systems engineering through DC power supplies and UPS systems in the early 1990s, and spent the next three decades designing standby power for some of the largest infrastructure projects in the Asia-Pacific and Middle East — including LNG facilities, airport radar systems, and Pacific Island grid stabilisation.

From 2012 to 2016 I was ABB's sole global DC and AC UPS Systems Specialist, responsible for all standby power system design across ABB's worldwide project wins — a scope exceeding US$500M per year. I wrote and delivered training courses on batteries, UPS systems, and power electronics to 42 ABB business units worldwide.

Since then I have consulted on UNEP-funded Stockholm Convention work in the Cook Islands and Kiribati, established a hybrid power business unit for Powerbox Australia, and continued to deepen my battery technology expertise. In 2024 I turned my attention to AI, building two production platforms — this site (ethospower.ai) and ebatt.ai — along with the systems behind them: automated lead nurture pipelines, CRM integration, AI-generated blog publishing with newsletter distribution, a multi-tenant prompt optimisation tool, and an AI solution designer that generates interactive architecture diagrams. These are the same systems I build for clients.

I hold a bachelor's degree in education and philosophy with an ethics specialisation, and have published peer-reviewed research on codes of ethics, ethics training, and whistleblowing. That background shapes how I think about responsible AI deployment.