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06.11
Career Focus:
Power Engineering
By John R. Platt
Is power engineering a career in
crisis, an industry on hold, or a field ripe for
opportunity?
Yes to all three.
According to experts, the power
engineering field is about to undergo a major
1-2-3 punch that will shake it up more than at
any other point in its history:
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"Green" energy technologies
— such as
the smart grid, solar, wind, battery storage and
other areas — are about to totally transform
the business of energy generation, transmission
and distribution.
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But at the same time, many — if not the
majority — of the people currently working in
power engineering are rapidly approaching
retirement age and may soon leave the
profession.
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Meanwhile, not nearly enough new
engineers are entering the power engineering
profession to meet the anticipated demand that
will be seen in the next five to ten years.
These pending shifts will
present numerous challenges, but may also create
just as many opportunities for those willing to
embrace them.
Crisis # 1: Manpower
The aging population of power
engineers is "a crisis," says Geoff Zeiss,
director of the utility industry program at
Autodesk, Inc. "There's a lot of new stuff that
we're going to have to do in addition to the
normal things we've been doing in the utility
industry, and there are less people to do it."
According to Zeiss, the average
age of power engineers at many U.S. and Canadian
utilities is as high as 55 or 60, putting these
critical employees just a few years away from
retirement. "There's a large grouping of older
engineers who have 25 to 30 years of experience.
A significant portion of these experienced
engineers are going to leave the workforce soon.
As these people leave, they'll take a lot of the
information that's in their heads."
A 2009 report (pdf)
from the U.S. Power and Energy Engineering
Workforce Collaborative backs this up, finding
that by 2014 "approximately 45 percent of
engineers in electric utilities will be eligible
for retirement or could leave engineering for
other reasons. If they are replaced, then there
would be a need for over 7,000 power engineers
by electric utilities alone: two or three times
more power engineers may be needed to satisfy
needs of the entire economy."
Meanwhile, there are far too few
power engineers entering the field, or even
studying it. "Electrical power enrollment is way
down in colleges," says Zeiss. And at the same
time, as many as 70 percent of the faculty
teaching power engineering are also approaching
retirement age. "Not only are the current
engineers retiring, we're going to lose the
people who would be training the next
generation," he says.
Crisis # 2: Regulation
But even with this pending
employee shortage, another factor is holding
green energy back: regulation. "Federal and
state policies were created years ago," says Jim
Creevy, director of government relations for the
National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA).
"They don't yet recognize the things that have
changed, or the policies that need to be adapted
or created" to spur the growth of these new
technologies. Creevy points to a report (pdf)
from WIRES (the Working Group for Investment in
Reliable and Economic Electric Systems) that
says investment in new electric transmission
facilities in the U.S. could reach $12 to $16
billion per year, generating up to 200,000 new
full-time jobs, but only if regulations change
to make it possible. "WIRES says that private
investment is ready to be unleashed," says
Creevy, "but it's being held back by outdated
policies."
This regulatory hold-up is
slowing job growth in many areas of green
technology. "Green tech is extremely hot," says
Sid Mitchener, partner at Vaco, a recruiting and
consultant-placement company, "but we haven't
seen a lot of hiring." Mitchener says that many
startups in solar and wind power haven't been
able to get to the growth stage yet because the
current regulatory environment does not allow
them to expand to their full potential.
Opportunities from New
Technology
If the regulatory hurdles are
overcome, the growth of green technologies
offers what appears to be an almost endless
amount of opportunities for the people who
choose to work in power engineering.
The amount of work that will be
required is staggering. "If you look at
distribution networks, there's an awful lot of
work and investment that's going to be
required," says Autodesk's Zeiss. "The last time
I went to a transmission conference, the number
was something like 50,000 miles of new lines
over the next few years. Every substation is
going to at least need to be rehabilitated. In
addition, there will be thousands of new
substations. I expect a lot of investment in
substations."
The nature of distributed energy
generation will also require new investment.
"Solar and wind power sites are often located
the farthest away from residential centers, so
even more transmission is needed," says NEMA's
Creevy. "It used to be local. Now we're getting
power from remote locations like Nevada and
North Dakota."
The nature of the work will not
be the same as it has been for the last few
decades. Dr. Nada Marie Anid, dean of the School
of Engineering and Computing Sciences at the New
York Institute of Technology (NYIT), points to
her state's utility, Con Edison of New York, as
an example. "ConEd is struggling," she says. "We
have a very, very old grid. What will we do with
these electric cars? And these green
technologies? They're beautiful, but what do we
do with the extra energy? How do you connect
them to the grid in the first place? Then
there's the computing aspect of it, the cyber
security. We're not talking about your regular
utility guy, this is more high-tech. It's not
your traditional power engineering. It's
evolved."
Part of that evolution is an
increased need for computing and software
engineering, which have not traditionally been a
major part of power engineering work. The home
solar company SunRun is currently on a major
hiring push, concentrating on software
engineers. "The software systems we're building
are monitoring systems," says Matt Eggers, VP of
operations for the company. "We're signing up
1,000 customers a month. Every installation is a
little bit different. It takes a lot of software
to determine if each system is working as
expected."
SunRun is effectively building
"a fleet of distributed energy plants," says
Eggers, "and it keeps getting bigger and bigger.
Monitoring and maintaining those systems are
really important." SunRun has also created a
unique, proprietary billing engine, which needs
to reflect regulatory environments that vary
from state to state and utility to utility, as
well as sales tools, mobile apps, and software
that makes it easier and more efficient to
install home solar systems. "A catch-all term
our CTO uses is that we're building the
operating system for a distributed solar world,"
says Eggers.
Skills for the 21st Century
Power Engineer
These new technologies will
require power engineers to have some skills they
may not have traditionally possessed. Much of
that stems from the communications and
information functions of smart-grid and related
technologies. "Engineers need to take data and
model it and make smart decisions," says Vaco's
Mitchener. "It's also about customer
interaction, getting down to the transaction
level. More data on usage helps us to make sure
that equipment is working properly."
"In a nutshell, the smart grid
means it's a lot more like the Internet," says
Autodesk's Zeiss. "The new engineering people
that utilities are going to be hiring are going
to need a lot more IT skills. The control
software to manage these networks is going to be
highly automated. The networks are going to run
the grid, instead of the manual system we have
now. What's happening, to me, is similar to what
happened n banking with ATMs, the 'IT-ization'
of workflows. We've got a lot more to do and
fewer people to do it, and that drives a focus
on productivity."
Zeiss says that a lot of the
investment in smart grids will also involve
fiber and wireless networks.
The skills that are needed
aren't all technical, either. "Soft skills are
50 percent of hiring," reports Mitchener. "It's
extremely important. Engineers need to ability
to interact with groups outside of engineering
and then bring those requirements to the
technical teams."
But traditional skills are still
extremely valuable: "Knowledge of efficient
system design is a highly desirable, marketable
skill for engineers," says Benjamin Standish, an
engineer for RMF Engineering in Maryland.
"Efficiency is almost always a prime owner
requirement alongside reliability,
maintainability, and flexibility. An engineer
who understands how to design and optimize a
process for maximum efficiency, such as combined
heat and power systems, will save the owner
significant expenses over the project life
cycle."
Feeding the Beast
Many of the experts I spoke with
agreed that both industry and universities need
to do more to increase the supply of qualified
power engineers in the next five to ten years.
"I think utilities need to start
telling universities what they need from their
graduates and programs," says Zeiss.
That might also mean encouraging
students to enroll in power engineering
programs. "Students aren't excited about power
engineering," says NYIT's Anid. "We educators
need to present it in a way that's exciting and
will feed the demand." She suggests linking
power engineering to green technology and the
idea of doing good for the world. "It will ring
a bell with people," she says.
"That should be an advantage,"
says SunRun's Eggers. "Engineers want to do
something that's new and cool and is being used.
We're doing something good in the world. There's
a lot of cool work to be done."
Despite the multiple crises,
Zeiss says power engineering and green energy
are only going to grow: "I can't imagine a
better career right now," he says.
Resources
The IEEE Power & Energy Society
has a site to help
students find careers and internships
IEEE-USA Policy Statement on Electricity
Workforce Training
NEMA has produced an excellent
series of videos called
Vids 4 Grids to encourage students to study
power engineering
NYIT's
Cyber Security Conference, which included a
presentation on security for the power grid
The House Committee on Science,
Space and Technology's Subcommittee on
Investigations and Oversight Hearing on
"Green Jobs and Red Tape"
John R. Platt is a freelance
writer and entrepreneur, as well as a frequent
contributor to Today's Engineer,
Scientific American, Mother Nature
Network and other publications.
Comments may be submitted to
todaysengineer@ieee.org.
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