- New state-of-the-art digital grid lab and updated curriculum will
prepare students for today’s new energy workforce
CLEVELAND -- (Business Wire)
Siemens and Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) have formed a new
academic partnership to provide students with the skills needed to
operate and advance the nation’s energy grid. Faced with the growth of
renewable energy and the threat of outages from extreme weather, the
power grid is becoming more reliant than ever on intelligent, digital
technologies to smoothly operate the country’s critical infrastructure.
This new program will prepare students for this shifting energy
landscape by providing them with both new classroom curriculum and
hands-on learning via real-world software and hardware tools in a new
state-of-the-art Digital Grid Lab. The total value of the partnership is
approximately $1.2 million, including in-kind and monetary gifts.
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Siemens is working with long-time partner Case Western Reserve
University and its Case School of Engineering’s Electrical Engineering
and Computer Science Department to develop an experiential learning
curriculum that will better educate students to address the needs of a 21st-century
power grid. As part of this curriculum, a new Siemens Digital Grid Lab
give students hands-on experience with real-world digital grid software
and hardware already hard at work at some of the largest utilities
across the country. The training they will receive in the living lab
includes operating software that helps identify outages within
milliseconds so the grid can quickly recover from hurricanes or natural
disasters, and managing an advanced distribution management system that
can balance the addition of renewable generation like wind and solar
power on the grid.
“This exciting academic partnership with Siemens allows us to fulfill
one of our most fundamental missions—the training of the next generation
of students in an area of national need—and, importantly, it allows us
to do so in an experiential, hands-on way utilizing the most current
platforms,” said Venkataramanan "Ragu" Balakrishnan, the Charles H.
Phipps Dean of the Case School of Engineering. “This approach will
undoubtedly uncover new research challenges, not only in the area of the
digital grid, but also in many related areas, ranging from energy
generation, storage and distribution to economic and public policy.
Thus, the partnership will have enormous positive impact in our quest to
be the exemplar private urban university with global reach.”
Updated classes will also be offered across several focus areas
including the advanced control of energy systems, reliability
engineering, and power system analysis, among others.
“In order to train the next-generation energy workforce, we understand
that it can’t be done alone. There must be a focus on building training
initiatives across stakeholders, which is why we’ve partnered with Case
Western Reserve University on this important digital grid program,” said
Mike Carlson, President of Siemens Digital Grid, North America. “This
partnership makes the university one of the first in the U.S. to
institute a digital grid-focused curriculum using both classroom and
hands-on learning tools, which will ensure that their students are well
prepared for the energy jobs of today and tomorrow.”
The partnership will equip students with the latest skills needed to
land jobs in the evolving energy field, an industry currently facing a
skills gap akin to the nationally acknowledged talent gap in the
manufacturing sector. A recent U.S. Department of Energy jobs report
found that the country does not have enough workers to fill 1.5 million
new energy jobs by 2030 and 75 percent of companies have challenges in
hiring qualified candidates.
Siemens and Case Western Reserve have a long-standing partnership in the
Ohio region, including an over 30-year research collaboration on the
advancement of MRI healthcare technology. In 2016, Siemens Healthineers
and CWRU announced an exclusive research partnership to further develop
a medical imaging method known as “Magnetic Resonance Fingerprinting.”
In addition, Siemens has previously provided the university with in-kind
grants of product lifecycle management software.
Alexis Abramson, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at
Case Western Reserve and co-director of the Great Lakes Energy Institute
described this latest collaborative effort as “building a living
laboratory for grid modernization” because the university also has its
own campus electrical distribution and because of partnerships with
industry leaders. “It’s a combination that no one else in the world may
have, and we have it in Northeast Ohio, on this campus.”
About Siemens
Siemens
Corporation is a U.S. subsidiary of Siemens AG, a global powerhouse
focusing on the areas of electrification, automation and digitalization.
One of the world’s largest producers of energy-efficient,
resource-saving technologies, Siemens is a leading supplier of systems
for power generation and transmission as well as medical diagnosis. With
approximately 377,000 employees in 190 countries, Siemens reported
worldwide revenue of $92.0 billion in fiscal 2017. Siemens in the USA
reported revenue of $23.3 billion, including $5.0 billion in exports,
and employs approximately 50,000 people throughout all 50 states and
Puerto Rico.
About Case Western Reserve University
Case
Western Reserve University is one of the country's leading private
research institutions. Located in Cleveland, we offer a unique
combination of forward-thinking educational opportunities in an
inspiring cultural setting. Our leading-edge faculty engage in teaching
and research in a collaborative, hands-on environment. Our nationally
recognized programs include arts and sciences, dental medicine,
engineering, law, management, medicine, nursing and social work. About
5,100 undergraduate and 6,200 graduate students comprise our student
body. Visit case.edu
to see how Case Western Reserve thinks beyond the possible.
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Contacts:
Journalists
Siemens
Andrew Gumbiner, +1 202-375-9742
andrew.gumbiner@siemens.com
or
Case
Western Reserve University
Mike Scott, 440-823-9243
Mike.Scott@case.edu
Follow
us on Twitter www.twitter.com/siemensUSA
@CWRU
Source: Siemens Corporation
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