A big picture on power engineering research, education and industry

A talk given to IEEE PES/IAS USF student chapter by Prof. Lingling Fan, Associate Professor, Smart Grid Power System Lab, EE, USF (http://power.eng.usf.edu)

The traditional power industry, or the utility industry has a socialism flavor. Let’s just say, the job is stable. Here are some quotes from a recent New Yorker article (Power to People, Why the rise of green energy makes utility companies nervous, by Bill McKibben, June 29, 3015)

“’If you’re in a business where the customer is the public-utility commission, and after that your profits are locked in by law, it’s the sleepiest business sector there is, if you could even call it a business sector. They build power plants, sit back, and the money comes in.’ The entire realm is protected, he added, by `a huge force field of boringness.’”

Education can be timeless. In fact, a professor can use his/her notes developed 30 years ago for Power System courses. All the fundamentals are timeless, be it KCL/KVL or Faraday’s Law.

Not anymore. Today, the power industry is full of exciting R&D opportunities. Research and education follow up the change. 

The big motivating force is environmental concerns and fossil fuel deficiency. Global warming and climate change result in inhabitable environment which can further leads to hunger, civil wars, and genocides. A 2008 article from The New York Times (Rwanda as an Example of the Damagers of Climate Change) indicates that global warming is the key cause of genocide in Rwanda. 

Fossil fuel consumption is a main contributing factor to global warming. Curtailing fossil fuel is a challenge posed to the power industry. Development and use of renewable energy is the driving force of the emerging new technologies in the power area. 

While wind generators employ the classic rotating electric machine mechanism to convert mechanical energy to electric energy, solar PV and energy storage rely on first of all the breakthrough in material science. 

The next stage of applications is grid integration of those energy sources. That is the job of power engineers. The two important new technologies happening in the power area are hardware (Power Electronics) and software (Information Technology). 

Even back in 1980s, there were wind farms built in Nevada and California responding to the rising oil price. But today’s wind turbines have 15 times of capacity (eg., 1.5 MW per turbine manufactured by GE doubly fed induction generator wind turbine ) compared to 1980s’ turbine (100 kW). The technology behind is Power Electronics. Voltage source converter is able to handle high power which makes the use of variable speed constant frequency wind turbine possible. By comparison, the 1980s’ turbines were not equipped with voltage source converters and cannot capture wind energy in a wide range of wind speeds. 

The advance of Power Electronics Technology relies on material science and electrical engineering. Recent advance include wide-band semiconductors, which can enhance the efficiency of power electronic switches. For example, CREE at North Carolina is a manufacturer. Then at the application level, how to assemble the switches to make a circuit for electricity conversion (dc/dc, dc/ac, ac/dc), this is the job of Power Electronics engineers. Further, how to make the assembled systems (converters, for example) to work as designed, this is the job of various electrical engineers. Low power applications such as computer power supply are very different from the high power applications (motor drive, High-voltage direct current system) in terms objectives and system requirements. In fact, the IEEE Power Electronics community has two separate conferences for low power and high power applications. APEC is for low power applications while ECCE is for high power applications. 

The second important technology happening in Power Area is, in my opinion, information technology. Many new applications such as PMU technology, demand response, smart building, vehicle to grid, power market and power system operation deal with large-scale system computing and operations research. In the power area, many jobs are related to software or computing. For example, a couple of DOE labs are working on projects related to V2G, smart building, etc. These labs hire applied mathematicians and control people. 

Aiming to provide competitive work force for the current job market, at USF, two graduate study tracks are offered with rigorous courses. The first track is Power Electronics focused Renewable Energy Integration, and the second track is computing focused Power System Operation. The course settings are listed as follows.

—  Renewable Energy Integration

◦       Power Electronics

◦       Energy Delivery Systems

◦       AC Machines and Drives

◦       Related control courses

—  Power System Operation

◦       Power System Analysis

◦       Power Systems II

◦       Power Market

◦       Related operations research courses (eg., LP, MIP)

We have many student success stories to share with the audience. However, due to time limit, please check our websites for more details. Thank you for your attention.