1

1

Importance of Electrical Power Systems Education

NSF Workshop on Electric Energy Education Texas A&M University, Doha, Qatar

Prof. Saifur Rahman Director, Virginia Tech Advanced Research Inst., USA

Vice President IEEE Power & Energy Society

2

2

3

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

3

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

5

6

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

4

7

Evolving Nature of the Electric Power System

Electric Power & Communication Infrastructures

Central Generating Station Step-Up

Transformer

Distribution Substation Receiving

Station Distribution Substation

Distribution Substation

Commercial

Industrial Commercial

Gas Turbine

Recip Engine

Cogeneration

Recip Engine

Fuel cell

Micro- turbine

Flywheel Residential

Photo voltaics

Batteries

Residential Data Concentrator

Control Center

Data network Users

2. Information Infrastructure

1.Power Infrastructure

Source: EPRI 8

5

Smart Grid

Source: Altalink, Alberta, Canada

10

• Alternate energy systems and associated power electronics will be essential

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

Engineering Needed to Accomplish This Task

6

11

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.

12

US Federal Support for Workforce Training

US $100 million funding opportunity

7

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

8

IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery IEEE Transactions on Power Systems IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid

PES Journals

Annual General Meeting IEEE T&D Conference

Power Systems Conf & Exposition PowerTech Conference in Europe PowerCon Conference in the Asia

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

Regular PES Conferences

9

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

18

Thank you for your attention

Saifur Rahman srahman@vt.edu