🔦🚲 ESE Newsletter #11: Energize, Electrify, Save the World 🍫🧢
"Electricity is like organized lightning." - George Carlin
Electricity. Power. Energy.
It keeps the lights on. What is it?
According to the hit show, Stranger Things, it’s monsters.
(Don’t worry, no Season 4 spoilers ahead!)
The show takes place in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana. The Hawkins National Laboratory, operated by the U.S. Department of Energy, is the hub of the action and where the interdimensional gate opens, allowing interplay between the town and the monsters that live on the other side.
And while the monsters in Stranger Things aren’t real, your electric bill certainly is.
As painful as it might be for you and I to see our utility bills increase, imagine just how impactful that is when scaled up to an industrial user such as the high-tech companies that will be employing your students.
Not only that, our region currently has nine new or under-construction hospitals, eight in Allegheny County and one in Westmoreland. The Pittsburgh area has become well-known for our amazing hospitals. People travel to Pittsburgh for complicated procedures. Hospitals, in general, use 2.5 times as much energy as similar-sized commercial buildings.
An energy diet, or rolling blackouts, could be devastating when you’re in the middle of the latest episode of Stranger Things, and almost as bad would be the impact on our region’s manufacturing hubs and healthcare facilities.
While this may sound bleak, the future is bright for Pennsylvania. Lawmakers are taking aggressive action by lowering the corporate net income tax to make our state more competitive. This is expected to attract more manufacturing and corporate investment.
If history has shown us anything, I predict accelerated growth. Growth is good but it does create a problem that we need to solve.
You and I both know that our power-grids, not just here but across the country, are largely inconsistent, unreliable, and increasingly expensive.
Our region’s growth will create a greater demand for skilled careers but also a need for alternative and sustainable energy. And I’m not just talking solar and wind!
It falls on Education to imbue the right skills in the workforce to operate, maintain and enforce the needed infrastructure for smart grid technology. Smart grid technology is key to making our systems reliable, sustainable, and life-saving.
To meet and embrace the challenges of the growth that is currently happening and will continue to do so at an accelerating rate, you, Education, must lead along with Industry. There’s no time to waste.
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Traditional courses must include everything from line worker training to electrical engineering but also develop a multidisciplinary approach — a wider view of the overall energy landscape.
A workforce that collectively inspires confidence in the region to grow and adapt to these increasing needs and upcoming changes is what will allow Pennsylvania to continue being a destination for not only innovators in manufacturing but also people who need life-saving procedures.
Are your training programs keeping pace?
Highlights from Our Region
Neighborhood91
Neighborhood 91, located at the Pittsburgh Airport Innovation Campus (PAIC), is a manufacturing consortium responsible for the condensing and connecting of the supply chain.
The facility is unique because not only does it power both terminals, the airfield, the Hyatt hotel, and a Sunoco gas station, it is fueled in part by the airport’s own natural gas wells drilled on-site and nearly 9,000 solar panels covering eight acres.
As of July 2021, the Pittsburgh International Airport has saved one million dollars on energy due to its use of an advanced microgrid infrastructure.
“We all need aviation and a lot of us want it to be more sustainable, so we want to be at the forefront of making that happen and we are doing it right here,” said Pittsburgh International Airport CEO Christina Cassotis.
Energy GRID Institute
The Energy GRID Institute at the University of Pittsburgh is working closely with the City of Pittsburgh to develop solutions that are unique to the City: its climate, topography, energy needs, resources, and existing infrastructure.
The City hopes to demonstrate what the American "City of the Future" looks like, with all its attendant environmental, economic, and job-creation benefits. It will also serve as a template for other cities seeking to reinvent their energy systems.
Focused Solution
Our partner, Festo Didactic, has an extremely capable and robust product line to train your students. It’s the Electric Power Technology Training System.
While the topic coverage is extremely vast, we are seeing a growing need and adoption of smart grid technology training solutions. I have been having these conversations with instructors and administrators across the commonwealth.
You can find a complete catalog here.
See the Grants section for CIP Code alignments!
Event
2022 PACTA Summer Leadership Conference July 26-28, 2022
Fred Haas from New Scale Robotics will be joining the ESE crew for the PACTA Conference. Come say hi if you’re at the Penn Stater Conference Center in State College.
The ESE-sponsored Keynote Speaker is Dr. Joe Sanfelippo. He is the National Superintendent of the Year 2019, the author of four books, and a very impactful speaker.
Watch below to hear Dr. Joe explain the 3 B’s — Beans, Buses & Balls!
Grants
Not a lot of funding deadlines in the middle of summer BUT…
Governor Tom Wolf signed the $45.2 billion 2022-23 budget which includes an increase of $6.1 million of funding for career and technical education (CTE) programs.
Not sure which CIP Code these training systems fall under? I’ve compiled a quick list of some CIP Code - Training Systems alignments here. ⬇️
CIP 1.0201 - Agricultural Mechanization
1100 - Energy Systems
Various 8010-XX Electric Power Technology Training
Systems Configurations 8010-X
CIP 46.0399 - Electrical & Power Transmission Installers
1400 - Green Technology
Various 8010-XX Electric Power Technology Training
Systems Configurations 8010-X
CIP 15.0303 - Electrical, Electronic & Communications Engineering Technician
300 - Instrumentation
400 - Ohm's Law/Power
500 - Series Circuits
600 - Parallel Circuits
700 - Series-Parallel Circuits
900 - Alternating Current
1000 - Oscilloscope
1100 - Inductance
1200 - Inductive Reactance
1300 - Resistor Inductor (RI) Circuits in Alternating Current (AC)
1400 - Transformers
1500 - Capacitance
1600 - Capacitive Resistance
1700 - Resistance Capacitance (RC) Circuits
1800 - Resistance Inductance Capacitance (RLC) Circuits
1900 - Resonance
2200 - Power Supplies
2300 - Transistor Characteristics
2400 - Small Signal Amplifiers
2500 - Operational Amplifiers
3000 - Motors
Various 8010-XX Electric Power Technology Training
Systems Configurations 8010-X
Basic Motor Controls TP1221
Industrial Controls Training System 8036-X
CIP 15.9999 Engineering Technologies/Technicians
1200 - Power and Energy
1300 - Mechanical Advantage and Mechanisms
1500 - Green Energy
1600 - Machine Controls and Automated Systems
2300 - Basic Electricity and Electronics
Various 8010-XX Electric Power Technology Training
Systems Configurations 8010-X
Basic Motor Controls TP1221
Industrial Controls Training System 8036-X
Time to go Running Up That Hill to escape the Demogorgons. See you in August!