DOE-Sponsored Nationwide University Consortium

Welcome to the DOE-Sponsored Nationwide Consortium of Universities to
 Revitalize Electric Power Engineering Education by State-of-the-Art Laboratories

OVERVIEW

This consortium of 82 U.S. universities is led by University of Minnesota (UMN) and is supported by the Dept. of Energy with ARRA funding.  The principal investigator is Ned Mohan of the UMN Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering who is supported by three co-principal investigators including Bruce Wollenberg, William Robbins, and Paul Imbertson,  all of the ECE Dept. The project is for three years and commenced on July 30, 2010. Total funding for the project is approximately $4.2 million with DOE providing $2.5 million and the rest from cost-sharing by the University of Minnesota and the other participating institutions.

PROJECT OBJECTIVES

The objective is to revitalize U.S. power engineering education programs in institutions of higher education to meet immediate and near-future needs. Each of the 82 U.S. universities will implement the state-of-the-art laboratories in power engineering which are part of an overall new electrical energy systems curriculum (details at www.ece.umn.edu/groups/power) developed at the University of Minnesota.  In addition to these laboratories, which will be new at most of the participating universities, this project will also result in much needed faculty development and new classroom materials in support of the power engineering curriculum.  This new educational framework will quickly start producing a large number of graduates with a fundamentals-based education who can meet the multi-disciplinary challenges inherent to our nation's efforts to make the nation's grid cleaner, smarter, and more reliable.  It will also be a foundation for graduate education and research in the areas of renewable energy such as wind, solar, storage, and energy conservation.

PROJECT SCOPE

This consortium, led by the UMN, will be a large and vibrant learning/teaching community of 82 universities, forming a national consortium with extensive diversity which will be expected to transform undergraduate power engineering education.   The consortium will be a foundation for graduate education and research in the areas of renewable energy such as wind, solar, storage, and energy conservation.  Partner universities will disseminate this curriculum to other regional universities, and technical and community colleges.  In developing additional innovative laboratory experiments, the consortium will seek the guidance of experts in this field to incorporate elements of current industrial practices and future trends.

The University of Minnesota will carry out the following activities to implement the project objectivies:

1. Form a large and diverse learning/teaching community by establishing a consortium with a large number of universities that represent an extensive diversity in terms of geography, size, combination of teaching/research mission, and service to underrepresented groups;
2. Facilitate the implementation of laboratories developed at the University of Minnesota that are essential in supporting a forward-looking curriculum in power engineering.
3. With partnering universities and others having similar laboratory setups and software,  collectively develop and share laboratory experiments that exploit the flexibility offered by these novel laboratories to suit the diverse nature of the consortium universities; and
4. Encourage and facilitate the participating universities to further disseminate these laboratories, and the curriculum in which they are used, in their region to other universities and technical and community colleges.