New Courses and Curricula for the Smart Grid

Pete SauerUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

NSF workshop, July 26-27, 2014Arlington, VA, USA

What should we teach?

• Industry people tell me constantly that they want their new engineers to know the fundamentals and the soft communication skills

• The Smart Grid utilizes new technologies that we have not always emphasized in our fundamental courses.

• There seems to be a growing need to change our definition of fundamentals

• The need for soft communication skills includes exposure to new policy and economic issues

What should they learn (GTH)?

• How to be a productive power engineer capable of solving contemporary engineering problems

• How to remain abreast with new developments in engineering and energy policy, including continuing engineering education and professionalism

• Have a feeling for what is important (and what is not so important)

• How to communicate

• How to find answers to questions when the individual is unsure of the correct approach – i.e., availability of professional resources

Instilling enthusiasm (GTH)

• RENEWABLES appeal to the students who have an interest in the public good. They also like electric vehicles and the need to reduce oil consumption. Sustainability is on their minds – global change.

• COMPUTER SOFTWARE appeals to students who are adept at software products. Experience with full software tools (not ‘student’ or abbreviated versions) and real system data enhances student interest.

• LABORATORY PROJECTS and senior (capstone) design experiences illustrate the theory, and the students who like to work with their hands are attracted to these projects.

Components of Smart Grid engineering (GTH)

Bloom’s taxonomy (GTH)

TECHNICIANS

BACHELORS LEVEL

MASTERS LEVEL

DOCTORAL LEVEL

Undergrad fundamentals

• First course in basics of electric power circuits, energy conversion, and power networks (Junior level)

• First course in basics of communication, signal processing, and computer networks (Junior level)

• At least two more advanced courses in either of the above topics (senior level)

Grad fundamentals

• First course in basics of computer methods and modeling of large-scale power networks

• First course in basics of computer methods and modeling of communication and computer networks

• At least two more advanced courses in either of the above topics

“New” Topics• Renewable integration, distributed energy resources• A more serious need for storage• Electric vehicles• More reliability and risk analysis• Policy, economics and customer participation• More sensing, communication, computing and

control• Wide area visibility, monitoring, (control?) - PMUs

New Grad courses

• Combined coverage of power basics and communication basics

• Experience has indicated that power students are bored with the power part, and the communication/computer students are bored with their part

• Others have experienced too much material for one course

• Difficult to get significant depth with both types of students

• Maybe they should be modules?

The next new textbook?• Will it require fundamentals, or will it provide

fundamentals?• Will it be for narrow big-wire people, or narrow

small-wire people?• Will it be teachable by narrow big-wire people, or

narrow small-wire people?• Will we have to become unnarrow?• What will it include?• Maybe it should be modules?

IEEE Resources• E-learning

– http://ieee-elearning.org/– Smart Grid: From Concept to Reality– Smart Grid 101: NIST Smart Grid Conceptual model– Smart Grid 101: The “Smarter” Grid – What is it?– Many more

• IEEE/PES Webinars