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Importance of Electrical Power Systems Education

NSF Workshop on Electric Energy Education

Texas A&M University, Doha, Qatar

Prof. Saifur RahmanDirector, Virginia Tech Advanced Research Inst., USA

Vice PresidentIEEE Power & Energy Society

14 December 2009

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Electric Power & Energy

Community Needs and Priorities

Educational needs at the undergraduate and graduate levels and life-long learning

Academic practices in the recent past

Industry needs in the changing environment

CEWD 2008 Survey: Pipeline Results

Significant (~45%) attrition in five years

Age Results

–15% are < 33

–58% are 33 - 52

–27% are > 52

Median age is 45

Average age has declined

–2006: 45.7

–2007: 45.3

Hiring appears to be occurring

2006 Data

2007 Data

Source: Center for Energy Workforce Development -- Gaps in the Energy Workforce

Pipeline 2008 Survey

Power & Energy Industry

•Two-thirds of PES membership is from industry

•Strong tradition of industry-sponsored academic research in the US, Europe, Japan and China

•Close working relationship between academia and practicing engineers

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Electric Power System of the Future

Electricity supply mix away from fossil fuels with

expanded development of wind, solar, biomass,

geothermal, nuclear and energy from the oceans

Expanded focus on energy efficiency

Greater application of IT and communication

technologies

Smart Grid

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Evolving Nature of the Electric Power System

Electric Power & Communication Infrastructures

Central GeneratingStation

Step-Up Transformer

DistributionSubstation

ReceivingStation

DistributionSubstation

DistributionSubstation

Commercial

Industrial Commercial

Gas Turbine

RecipEngine

Cogeneration

RecipEngine

Fuel cell

Micro-turbine

Flywheel

Residential

Photovoltaics

Batteries

Residential Data

Concentrator

Control Center

Data network Users

2. Information Infrastructure

1.Power Infrastructure

Source: EPRI 8

Smart Grid

Source: Altalink, Alberta, Canada

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•Alternate energy systems and associatedpower electronics will be essential

•Needs expertise in communication, signal processing, controls, computing in addition to power systems

Engineering Needed to Accomplish This Task

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Core Functions of IEEE PES

Develop standards (eg, IEEE 1547).

Provide education to develop the workforce for the

future.

Provide a mechanism to publish new developments.

Education and research aspects for alternative

energy power conditioning can be easily adopted

and in some cases, are already under consideration.

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US Federal Support for Workforce Training

US $100 million funding opportunity

Industry Needs

Create on-line educational products portfolio for the

practicing engineer

•Create the business model

• Implement an e-commerce tool for distribution

• Further define content

•Enter existing content in the Digital Library

•Promote availability

Measurement – define practioner involvement and increase it

How is the Power & Energy Society Responding?

Tutorials – At PES conferences and free-standing

venues

Expert Now Modules

• Various power system topics

• Smart Grid

Plain Talk offerings – Power System topics in

layman’s terms

Expand Plain Talk for offerings in R8 -10

Creating DLP voice-overs

IEEE Transactions on Energy ConversionIEEE Transactions on Power DeliveryIEEE Transactions on Power SystemsIEEE Transactions on Sustainable EnergyIEEE Transactions on Smart Grid

PES Journals

Annual General MeetingIEEE T&D Conference

Power Systems Conf & ExpositionPowerTech Conference in Europe PowerCon Conference in the Asia

Asia-Pacific Power & Energy Engineering Conf.PowerAfrica ConferenceAsia-Pacific T&D, and Latin-America T&D

Regular PES Conferences

The Energy 2030 Conference in November 18-19, 2008 in Atlanta, Georgia co-sponsored with IEEE-USA, IEEE-SA, IAS,

PELS and PES.

A joint PES and Industry Applications Society (IAS) conference was held in the fall ‘09 in Valencia, Spain focusing on energy.

Innovative Smart Grid Technologies (ISGT) Conference in Washington, DC, January 2010

Asia-Pacific Power & Energy Engineering conference at Chengdu in China in March 2010.

Specialized Conferences

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Thank you for your attention

Saifur Rahman

srahman@vt.edu