We could be doing a great deal more to train future power engineers. Climate change is an existential threat, and to combat this crisis will require a generation of power engineers driven by this mission. As it turns out, many of the solutions (though by no means all) are in the domain of power engineering, such as the generation of electricity using renewables (wind and solar), storage, and conservation. Given that the transportation sector now exceeds the electric power sector in producing greenhouse gases, plug-in electric vehicles are a solution that will require additional energy to be generated by renewables. And a robust grid will be required to bring energy from remotely located sources to where the load is.
Education is always the first step, and a forward-looking curriculum is required. What would such a curriculum look like? What is needed is a holistic approach. After all, the solutions are not compartmentalized into different branches of power engineering—the knowledge of power systems, power electronics, electric machines and drives, and control is simultaneously required, calling for an all-inclusive view of power engineering. A wind power plant is one example of the need for knowledge in all these areas. There are many challenges, and the following sections outline some of them and their possible solutions.
Seizing the Moment: Creating a Pipeline of High School Students Entering Power Engineering
Young people are very concerned about the climate crisis. Therefore, we have an excellent opportunity to capitalize on this to increase the pipeline of talented high school students opting to pursue careers in power/energy. At the University of Minnesota, we have developed the material for a freshman-level course “Climate Crisis: Implementing Solutions” (z.umn.edu/ee1701) that is piloted in high schools through our university’s College in the Schools program, a dual-credit/concurrent enrollment program. The material for this course is offered free of cost to all universities to adapt and modify as they see appropriate in initiating such a course.
Carefully Developing the Undergraduate Power Engineering Curriculum
Undergraduate education is not a time to specialize, and we need to provide students with a broad education such that they may pursue a career that is best for them. Therefore, it is essential to structure the undergraduate curriculum to include just a few very well-thought-out power engineering courses. This could consist of one each on power systems, power electronics, and electric machines/drives. These courses should be standalone, yet provide a link to other courses. For example, in a power systems course, any discussion of power electronic systems is considered as a black box, other than its input/output terminal characteristics. As we are preparing students for today and tomorrow, the legacy topics should be omitted, since they waste valuable course time and give a wrong impression regarding their usefulness. The benefit of having just a few power engineering courses is that it allows complementary courses such as controls and computers to be taken, providing students with a broad education while gaining a deep understanding of power.
Expanding Graduate Education in Power Engineering
Graduate education is a place for students to specialize in power engineering and gain an education in a variety of its sub-fields. The challenge is that most universities neither have the faculty with expertise in these sub-fields, other than their own specialization, nor have the critical number of students to make the teaching of some of the courses feasible.
To overcome this challenge, through a grant from the Office of Naval Research of the U.S. Navy, we have developed fifteen such graduate-level courses, and all the course material is uploaded to a website of the Consortium of Universities for Sustainable Power (https://cusp.umn.edu/). Experts in their respective fields have designed these courses. They include topics that are no longer being taught in most U.S. universities but are still very relevant to designing and building the equipment for a robust and sustainable power grid and operating it most efficiently. In addition to the usual courses on power systems, power electronics, and electric machines/drives, some of these courses are on topics such as wind energy essentials, power system protection and relaying, high voltage engineering and insulation coordination, design of electric apparatus such as transformers and generators using finite element analysis, and so on.
Offering Online Labs
While the graduate and the undergraduate lecture courses can certainly be taught online during pandemics and prolonged power outages, the teaching of labs associated with these courses is considered to be an obstacle. However, it need not be if these lab experiments are digitally controlled through a computer. In such a case, students need not be in a physical lab; instead, they can remotely control the lab computer, complete their experiments, and get the results for making a lab report. We have developed such lab experiments for all three courses, and these extremely low-cost experimental setups are available through a University of Minnesota startup Sciamble (https://sciamble.com/). The other advantage of the online labs is that only one experimental setup is needed; students share that by reserving a timeslot per week. The entire lab can be set up at an extremely low cost that any university can afford.
Developing an Online Master of Engineering Degree for Practicing Engineers
In addition to providing a forward-looking education to undergraduate and graduate students, it is vital to keep the knowledge of thousands of practicing engineers up to date. To accomplish this, an online Master of Engineering degree will be very beneficial, and such degrees are available from some schools. At the University of Minnesota the fifteen graduate-level courses and the online labs we have developed are very relevant for such an online master’s degree, and the attempt to create one is underway.
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In summary, taking a holistic approach and sharing resources regardless of where they are developed, we can train future power engineers to tackle the power system needs of the coming decades. We have the resources, and what’s needed is the will to do so.
Ned Mohan
Regents Professor || National Academy of Engineering || Fellow: IEEE
Electrical & Computer Engineering || University of Minnesota
Ryan Quint says
Ned, great points made here. Reflecting on my education and looking forward for future generations, some key points stand out.
1) What we called “advanced” is no longer advanced. Understanding detailed control block diagrams, how power electronics operate down at the IGBT level and how that reflects back up to decisions for grid operation, planning, and design is becoming increasing useful.
2) EMT modeling and studies was not taught in undergrad and only very briefly touched on in grad school. There should be entire courses geared solely to learning EMT tools (multiple vendors) to solve real-world problems.
3) Engineering leadership is critical. More and more, the problems are becoming policy-, regulatory-, or economics-driven. The engineering, in many cases, is becoming the easy topic. We need more folks learning “sales” techniques – mirroring, empathy, problem solving, coordination, systems integration. I wish I had taken more business acumen courses because they apply to my engineering work more than ever.
4) Connection of academia and reality. This is always an issue and we collectively do our best. But it is ALWAYS good to get students engaged in what the real world is focused on. Not just solely academia deems interesting and worthwhile to write academic articles on. The gap between academia and actual grid issues is growing, as it always has; rather than shrinking. We all need to continue working to solve this problem together.
5) Pipeline of students connecting with industry. We often don’t hear from prospective students until they go on the hunt for internships or job opportunities. With decreasing staff sizes and increasing workloads, it’s becoming hard to find the “diamond in the rough” so late in the game. Early engagement helps both sides develop connections.
As I mentioned, you’re hitting a critical point in your post; and I commend you and all of academia for all the work developing the future engineering staffs across North America and around the world.
Jason Schmidt says
Thanks for sharing the resource of content for the online courses sponsored by the Consortium of Universities for Sustainable Power. I find the content interesting and a nice resource.
Ned Mohan says
Thank you so much – I really appreciate these comments.
Hassaan Idrees says
Prof. Mohan, your book on Power Electronics and Drives was, and probably is, an essential read for all undergrads and it’s great to see the interesting points you’ve made here. Some other portals that can help folks include https://pserc.wisc.edu/home.aspx and http://www.psercacademy.asu.edu.
John Simonelli says
Ned, very insightful piece.
1) I wholeheartedly agree that we need to reach out to the high school students to start stimulating interest in engineering in general and, specifically in the electric power industry. Too many potentially good engineers get sidetracked in high school and end up going to college for different majors.
2) I also agree the undergraduate level needs a more diverse curriculum. When I attended Northeastern back in the days when dinosaurs walked the earth, we not only took the standard power systems courses, (Stevenson book was the Bible), we also took basic thermodynamics, nuclear engineering, power electronics (the dawn of the digital relaying age) and synchronous machine theory. When you graduated you had a fairly good broad understanding of how electricity was produced, transmitted, and distributed.
3) I definitely agree more labs should be made available. Engineers are inherently hands-on people, they like to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty. Nothing better to reinforce the theories taught in classes than working through it in a lab.
4) There also needs to be an expansion of the non-technical curriculum, understanding ratemaking, the political regulatory climate, the role of FERC and NERC, etc. All of that now is done through tribal knowledge once an engineer gets hired.
5) I think the issue of graduate work is a tougher nut to crack. Engineers in my mind fall into two buckets, those that are destined to do very high end analytical research and those blue collar engineers that go to work every single day and grind out thousands and thousands of power flow, transient stability, PSCAD , etc., studies. It seems somewhere in there at the graduate level there needs to be 2 different paths for engineers to take depending on where they want to their career to go.
All in all, a thoughtful post, I wish we could find a way to do more to make it all happen.
KO says
Ned is on to it, so are Ryan and Simonelli.
The educational system is not envisioning future needs of students at any level. Engineering is hardest hit as technology expands by the minute. At the same time, understanding of the earths systems and human impact on them is growing and of major concern to the youngest who will be the most impacted. Engineering needs to, of all things, expand as well.
As we learn how solar panels can contribute to rehydration of desert lands, support sustainability of pollinators, essentially interacting with biology, energy engineering need to understand its expansive impact. The ripple in the pond. Primary school teachers who have been taught to teach to the test will be replaced with more flexible, fast-adapting tech-savvy teachers who will, by means of adapting to COVID restrictions, be more open to new directions in Curriculum and to students’ needs and curiosity.
I have seen this: California standards introduce electricity 4-5th grade, but 1st & 2nd grade students at summer camp had no problem understanding battery function, series and parallel or the concept that different materials produced electrical flow, after all, their toys were battery powered! Additionally, at the college where I taught overseas, Engineering and ART shared a building, in both schools classes were 50/50 male/female and there was a lot of cross studies collaboration.
My suggestion is to start with the students and give them the vision of a future and how it can be met.
choose love,