Abstract — There are numerous activities being undertaken to train and educate the workforce for the adoption of new smart grid technologies. This paper describes several of these activi-ties involving the IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES) as well as the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association (ECEDHA).

Index Terms — Power Engineering Education; workforce training, continuing education.

I. IEEE PES ACTIVITIES

he IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES) has numerous activities directed at preparing the fu-ture workforce for Smart Grid Technologies.

Several of those activities are being executed by the Power and Energy Education Committee (PEEC) which has an especially unique focus that crosses many tech-nical boundaries and aims to support the electric power engineering profession both at educational institutions, industry workforce training, and the general public. The PEEC web site can be found from the IEEE/PES web site, or directly at:

http://www.ieee-pes.org/education/education-committee PEEC activities that directly contribute to the education of the workforce for the Smart Grid are as follows:

(1) Life-Long Learning: This activity organizes and assists in hosting tutorials at PES technical conferences. (2) University Education Activities: This activity focus-es on improvement of university education through teaching methods, curricula, and maintaining an histori-cal survey database of faculty and university resources. (3) Career Promotion and Workforce Development: This activity helps provide solutions for power engineer-ing workforce issues and stimulates career interests. (4) Student Activities: This activity facilitates and or-ganizes the student activities programs for technical con-

This work was partially supported by the Power Systems Engi-

neering Research Center (PSerc) and the Grainger Endowments to the University of Illinois.

Pete Sauer is with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA (psauer@illinois.edu).

ferences with assistance from local organizing commit-tees.

II. U.S. POWER AND ENERGY ENGINEERING WORK-FORCE COLLABORATIVE

The U.S. Power and Energy Engineering Workforce Collaborative was organized to improve the supply of engineers in the electric power and energy profession from beginning engineers through advanced degrees and the faculty pipeline. Since the U.S. has a unique prob-lem with a large number of retirements occurring in the near future, many of the activities of this effort are fo-cused on the U.S. only at this time. When the efforts are shown to be successful, the efforts will be extended to other regions of the world when similar workforce issues emerge. The collaborative web site can be found from the IEEE/PES web site, or directly at:

http://www.ieee-pes.org/workforce/workforce-collaborative

The goals of the collaborative are to:

(1) Double the production of undergraduate and gradu-ate students in power engineering. (2) Provide $4M in funding for undergraduate power engineering scholarships to U.S. citizens. (3) Create 2,000 internship and cooperative opportuni-ties for electrical engineering students. These opportuni-ties will help students to understand the industry and help industry to recruit new engineers. (4) Hire 80 new faculty over the next five years to re-place retiring faculty, to increase enrollments, and to broaden educational offerings. (5) Raise annual non-equipment funding of university power engineering research from $50M to $100M over the next five to eight years.

The PES Scholarship program is described at:

http://www.ee-scholarship.org/

This program has finished the first round of competition and will be seeking applicants for the second round in 2012.

Education of the Engineering Workforce for Smart Grid Technologies

Peter W. Sauer, Fellow IEEE

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978-1-4577-0875-6/11/$26.00@2011 IEEE

III. ELEARNING (EXPERT NOW) The original IEEE Expert Now resources are availa-ble through the following web link: http://www.ieee-pes.org/education/resources The Expert Now resource provides one-hour long online learning modules. It focuses on emerging technologies and seminal work presented at the best of IEEE’s con-ference tutorials, short courses and workshops.

IV. PLAIN TALK COURSES The IEEE/PES Plain Talk courses are described at the

following web link: http://www.ieee-pes.org/education/programs/plain-

talk-courses

Most recently, these courses included:

(1) Power System Basics – Understanding the Electric Utility Operation Inside and Out (2) Distribution Systems – Delivering Power to the Cus-tomer (3) The Grid – The Interconnected Electric Bulk Power System.

V. PES CAREERS Several recent features on the PES web site concentrate on providing tools to help engineers with their careers. The following web link describes these activities:

http://www.ieee-pes.org/workforce/pes-careers The site is designed to be a service both to students, en-gineers seeking alternative employment, and industrial workforce recruiters.

VI. ECEDHA ACTIVITIES The Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association (ECEDHA) has had several recent activities targeted to increasing the educational efforts in the Smart Grid Technologies. Their web site is:

http://www.ecedha.org/ Since these technologies span the entire sphere of inter-est within most Electrical and Computer Engineering Departments, ECEDHA has worked with the U.S. Na-tional Science Foundation (NSF) to bring attention to the education needs and opportunities in this area. These efforts began with a workshop held Oct 30 – Nov 2, 2010 in Washington DC. This workshop was followed

by the annual meeting from Mar 11-14, 2011 in Phoenix, AZ. That meeting included sessions on the challenges and opportunities in power and energy systems. It also formulated the idea of a Summer School focused on En-ergy and the Smart Grid Technologies. The first Sum-mer School was hosted by Georgia Tech University from July 9 to 12, 2011. The school offered presentations on the following topics:

• Basic Electric Power Engineering Fundamentals • Basics of Power Delivery • Role of Power Electronics in Power Systems • Electricity from Renewables & Sustainable Energy • Energy, Ecology and Environment • Basics of Interconnected Energy and Power Sys. • Basics of Cyber Security • Basics of Power System Control and Protection • Cyber-Physical System Security of Smart Grid • Sensor Data Gathering, Management, and Storage • Energy Storage: Need and Technologies • Emerging Computer-Communication Architectures • Role of Comm. Schemes, Protocol & Standards • Future of Smart Grid: Global perspective • Evolution of Energy Control Centers: EMS

Presentations from this offering are at: http://ecedha.org/ep_presentations/ep_presentations2011.asp There may be repeats of this Summer School in coming years.

VII. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS With all the recent interest in Smart Grid technologies, there are huge opportunities for educational activities at all levels. This panel presentation will highlight these opportunities and give examples of resources available from the IEEE Power and Energy Society and ECE-DHA.

VIII. BIOGRAPHY

Peter W. Sauer (StM’73, M’77, SM’82, F’93) received his BSEE from the Univer-sity of Missouri at Rolla and the MSEE and Ph.D. degrees from Purdue University. He has power facilities design experience with the US Air Force and was a cofounder of the PowerWorld Corporation. He is a registered Professional Engineer in Virgin-ia and Illinois, a Fellow of the IEEE, and a member of the U. S. National Academy of

Engineering. He has been at the University of Illinois since 1977, and he is currently the Grainger Chair Professor of Electrical Engineering.