Darrell Ross

I attended the IEEE PES PSCE 2009 (that’s the International Electric and Electronic Engineers Power & Energy Society Power Systems Conference & Exposition 2009 – yikes!) last week in Seattle, WA. I had a great time talking with various engineers and looking for possible job opportunities.

I attended a panel session concerning University & Industry Cooperation where the primary concern seemed to be a lack of Power Engineering graduates in the USA. There was some discussion on the industry side about creating more interest in the field to encourage students to get PE degrees; the University professors responded that there was plenty of interest but many students were intimidated by the calculus classes and changed majors at that point.

I think the Power Engineering Companies are just looking in the wrong place. Why not look for students who have completed applied math degrees? I am finishing up my MS in Math Modeling. Coupled with my BSCE, I can design and then code complex algorithms with ease. A PE graduate will still need months of on-the-job training. I bet I can learn the job nearly as quickly as a PE student. Perhaps not as fast but when the PE student’s learning curve tapers off, mine will keep going. I can surpass the basic level material and quickly progress onward without having to take extra math classes in stochastics, etc.

In addition to math students like myself, there are a whole host of fledgling programs out there in some form of renewable energy. At Humboldt State University, it’s called Environmental Resource Engineering (ERE) and the people that finish their MS degrees in ERE are already building small power systems – solar, micro-hydro, wind, etc. They have to take engineering math courses and many of them are involved in undergraduate research projects on power efficiency, hydrogen fuel cells, and more.

So my message to power companies is to look outside the box. There are plenty of graduates available for you. You’re just missing them because they don’t have the PE label on them. I am one of them but I’m aware of the situation so I’ll be working for one of you soon.

It’s been a feverish two weeks of work for me but it’s paid off. The model is complete. There are some minor adjustments to make so that the results look pretty and paper-ready but the main course is done. I have included a couple of images of the current scenario running. Keep in mind that this scenario is:

1. Wind Farm on Bear River Ridge with maximum 70MW output
2. A 25MW solar power plant in Southern Humboldt near Redway
3. A 25MW solar power plant in Northern Humboldt near Blue Lake
4. A 50MW wave farm off the coast.
5. 32.5MW Humboldt Redwood Company plant at 75% capacity
6. 18MW Fairhaven plant at 75% capacity
7. 13.8MW Ultrapower plant at 75% capacity

It should be noted ahead of time that this scenario does not meet the power needs of Humboldt County. There are some times of night when the wind dies down and the sea is calm during which the biomass just does not meet the peak demand. See for yourself.

Supply is the white in front and demand the blue in back. Hour 1 is equivalent to 1:00AM.

More data to come as I continue work on my presentation and write-up.

Distance gradient where white is nearest and dark blue furthest for each grid point to its nearest power source.

Another photo of my program runnining. I converted my power source definitions so that I can turn them on and off at my leisure. The above distance plot is similar to my previous post (here). The difference is what sources exist. In this one, the sources are (top to bottom left to right) -

1. Fairhaven Power Plant
2. North East Transmission line from the Central Valley (through Willow Creek)
3. Humboldt Bay Power Plant (just under Fairhaven – kind of looks like one big plant)
4. Humboldt Redwood Company (formerly PALCO)
5. South East Transmission line from the Central Valley (through Bridgeville)
6. Southern Transmission line up the 101

I neglected to put in some of the small players in the power supply. Basically any power plant less than 1MW I have left out. While 1MW is still substantial (sometimes as much as 5% of demand), the modeling of the current situation is only to demonstrate the functionality of the model. The goal of the design is to predict outcomes with newer configurations.

EDIT: Implementing a separate distance calculation for transmission lines was simple enough. Now you can see the lines in image below.

Current Humboldt County Power supply sources.