So, What's Your Major? Smart Grid to be Taught at Cincinnati State

If the Smart Grid major to be offered at a Cincinnati technical college catches on (and there's no reason why it shouldn't), we may find electric utility executives dancing in the streets because they'll have a ready supply of graduates with a thorough grounding in Smart Grid technologies looking for jobs.

Cincinnati State Technical and Community College will offer a Smart Grid major next fall as part of its power systems engineering technology program. Larry Feist, chair of the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Major at the college, said the Smart Grid major is intended to take advantage of short-term demand for technicians who install advanced electric and gas meters, and to also capitalize on the long-term need for specialists who can maintain the new technologies and equipment and work on the distribution and transmission elements of the new grid.

As Feist says, a key component of the Smart Grid is the smart meter and related equipment that provide both two-way communications and valuable usage information for both utilities and customers who choose to use it. Those advanced meters and related equipment also will allow utilities to quickly identify the location of outages and fix its own problems, reward customers who conserve energy and manage the electricity that feeds into the grid from customers who generate more power than they need from solar panels or wind turbines of their own.

Obviously, graduates who understand those concepts and how they work will be in demand. A Duke Energy official said the field has a lot of potential.

"Smart, digital technology is changing the face of the energy industry in much the same way wireless changed the telephone business," said Mark Wyatt, Duke's vice president of Smart Grid and energy systems. "Having a major devoted to understanding how this technology integrates with today's grid is an important first step in preparing tomorrow's energy professionals."

Duke Energy provides power in Ohio and several other states.

Cincinnati State officials said that while the Smart Grid major is geared toward the electric utility industry, it also would give students a set of skills that could be broadly applied to other industries.

The new major will be based on the college's traditional power systems engineering program, but also will include course work specifically on the Smart Grid, including instrumentation and control and distribution and transmission. Students in the program also will be required to get some on-the-job experience before graduation.

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