| Outcome/accomplishment:
Opening of the Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management
Systems (FREEDM) Center is helping to meet the need for a national education
program on renewable energy systems. FREEDM, an NSF-funded Engineering
Research Center (ERC), is headquartered at North Carolina State University.
NCSU launched a renewable energy concentration program for undergraduate
students, a renewable energy graduate certificate program for graduate
students and most recently, a master of science in electrical power system
engineering (that includes topics relevant to the clean-energy smart grid).
Impact/benefits:
The next-generation energy grid will use an array of advanced technologies
designed to make it more efficient and reliable. Renewable energy
curricula at the undergraduate and graduate level at NCSU and partner schools
will teach future engineers the technologies and methodologies for managing
the many variables in such a system.
Explanation/ background:
Among other developments, the partner schools are more robustly integrating
the topics of solar and wind energy into their instruction. For instance,
NCSU devotes a third of a semester on wind energy and solar photovoltaic
energy in its beginning course on energy conversion.
In the area of transmission
and distribution engineering, which deals with power lines and the equipment
that delivers electricity to cities and neighborhoods, students assess
current protective measures and weigh how feasible it would be to upgrade
them.
Electric power systems present
several design challenges when it comes to optimizing them for maximum
efficiency in the face of often-competing objectives. How best to
solve these challenges has been a source of ongoing discussion among graduate
researchers at the Center. As a result, a major learning module has
been inserted into master level graduate courses – available to all at
the partner schools – on the subject of multi-objective optimization and
multi-objective control. |
