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.
