Wanted: Power Engineers For Smart Grids

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Uncles Sam wants a few smart power engineers—quite a few in fact. Steven Chu, U.S. Secretary of Energy, put out a $100 million down payment last week to train a new generations of engineers to help build and run tomorrow's smart electric grid. Utilities say they need engineers who understand both information technology and electric power grids to handle next-generation systems now being defined and built. The $100 million in funds drawn from the economic stimulus package will be put up for competitive bids in two areas. About $60 million is aimed at workforce training programs for new or existing workers in utilities or electrical equipment makers who want to bolster their understanding of smart grid technologies. Another $40 million is earmarked for utilities, colleges and universities, trade schools, and labor groups who want to develop programs, strategies and curricula to train or retrain workers for smart grid jobs. "The smart grid involves technology new to the electric utility industry--integrating IT and power—so developing skills in the workforce to perform the transition is important," said George Arnold, smart grid coordinator at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Industry sources were quick to praise the move, but suggested it is just one of many steps needed. "I doubt the $100 million comes close to addressing the problem, but it could pay for creating the curriculum and some pilot programs to work out the kinks, so it could be handed over to other organizations who would do the training," said Fred Baker, a fellow at Cisco Systems active in smart grid standards efforts at NIST. "We are talking about deploying a whole new way of managing electricity, so your average electrician is going to have to understand a whole new set of things," said Baker. "It's kind of like putting computers into car engines, so putting money into education for this area sounds like a really good idea to me," he added. "We will need a lot of workforce training because there will be jobs we cannot fill, and there will be some skill sets we haven't even thought about yet, but will find we need once this stuff gets deployed," said Katherine Hamilton, president of the GridWise Alliance, a broad industry group supporting smart grids. "There aren't many power engineers left in the country because workers and even the professors who taught them are retiring," she added. Several reports issued in late 2006 pointed to a shortfall of power engineers, attributed in part to a lack of spending in education and research and relatively low salaries in the field. The engineers may be needed soon given the rise in activity in deploying smart grid trials. The U.S. Department of Energy has received more than 400 proposals contending for as much as $3.9 billion in government funds aimed at accelerating work on smart grids. The DoE will start selecting winning proposals in early November.