Deficit of Power Engineers

[ProxyAmenRa]

I was invited to a private lecture given by a guy who is one of the world's leading experts in high voltage transmission and electromagnetic fields. A very interesting lecture.

Long story short, I was having a conversation with him and he stated that the world is suffering from a deficit of power engineers. If anyone has a lack of direct about what profession they would like to specialize in, power engineering maybe worthwhile looking into.

 

[Meer]

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

^^^

That is what my father does. He is a power station operator.

 

[Coolydudey]

^^^

That is what my father does. He is a power station operator.

That must be one cool job no?

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

That must be one cool job no?

If you can handle the stress of operating machinery worth billions of dollars and a mistake will lead to losses in the order of millions of dollars. It is also shift work. After a couple of years subjected to it, you will never have a decent night's sleep again.

Risk to personal safety is high. My father nearly lost a had because a control panel was malfunctioning and an arc flash occurred. Similar to the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h10ALIpD0R4

Other than the above, you need a decent understanding of fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, controls systems logic and power engineering. Not because you need to know these subjects to operate a power station in normal conditions. When a crisis eventuates this understanding allows you to pinpoint what possibly has gone wrong.

 

[warryer]

I'd like to get into power engineering.... more of the fluids and thermo side than the electrical. I'm sure there is a deficit of experienced power engineers - I don't think the demand for newbies like me is very high.

I have recently graduated with a bachelors in mechanical engineering.

 

[EyeSeeCold]

Maybe it would help if you could explain why there is a deficit and give more information.

Why are less people training to become power engineers? Is it a dying field with growing irrelevancy? Why does the industry need more numbers than before? Is it because there is a economic-technological boom? What exactly is power engineering? What kind of work could one expect? What is the usual quality of working conditions?

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

Maybe it would help if you could explain why there is a deficit and give more information.

Why are less people training to become power engineers? Is it a dying field with growing irrelevancy? Why does the industry need more numbers than before? Is it because there is a economic-technological boom? What exactly is power engineering? What kind of work could one expect? What is the usual quality of working conditions?

Less people are deciding to study engineering as an aggregate. As for power engineering the field is increasingly becoming more relevant because of new technology and all of the old experienced engineers are retiring.

Power engineering is a subset of electrical engineering that primarily deals with power generation and distribution.

 

[EyeSeeCold]

Less people are deciding to study engineering as an aggregate. As for power engineering the field is increasingly becoming more relevant because of new technology and all of the old experienced engineers are retiring.

Power engineering is a subset of electrical engineering that primarily deals with power generation and distribution.

I just mean, in general, that those would be important questions to be answered as for recommending people for entering power engineering. I don't really expect you to have the professorial expertise to give comprehensive answers but I'm just saying it's what the thread lacks. It doesn't help me much to briefly mention a lecture you attended and say we should pursue that career, while barely giving any hands-on detail about what we'd be getting involved with and other beneficial information.

I have superficially considered it, when I was considering which engineering field I wanted to go into, but I still don't really know anything about it. Though now I'm leaning more towards the electronics / computer side of electrical engineering, and telecommunications.

 

[warryer]

Professors aren't usually very practical. What they work on and do can be far removed from what typically goes on in the everyday world. Everybody can't make money doing research.

Maybe your definition of power engineer is different than mine. It's seems that you are thinking of it beyond the turbine shaft power input. More into the mechanical to electrical conversion and then what happens with that electricity.

I like the combustion and heat transfer part.

I stand by my statement that there is a deficit of experienced engineers not so much engineers in general.

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

In engineering they want lecturers who have industry experience. Academic types are usually not wanted unless they're good researchers.

 

[Guess]

I would advise anyone to be rather cautionary about choosing a working field solely on the current demand for it. Of course, that can be one of the decision factors but one should weight in your own vocation and interests. I think this provides a much more solid chance of future payoff than choosing solely based on demand or solely on interests.

In fact, I was just reading a very interesting article about what companies requires vs candidate skills, and it gives the perfect example:

"Steven Cherry: Yeah, I think a good example of that was the IT job market, which has been sort of a roller coaster ride, except you can’t see where the highs and lows are.
Peter Cappelli: Right, and even when you can see them, the problem is it takes four years to get an IT degree. If you’re lucky, you get out in four years, and the problem with that is it could be a booming market when you enter, but by the time you get out, it’s a bust. And it’s pretty clear that that has happened to the IT world. As your colleagues and listeners probably remember, the IT recession in 1991, where on college campuses after that, people began to bail out of IT programs and switch to other fields. That class graduated about ’94–’95, which is just when the IT boom took off, and as real complaints about raising wages and high demand for those people. So then people poured into IT programs. They graduated about 2001, which was exactly when the next IT bust began. And so you got this problem, and you’re always going to have this problem if employers are relying on the schools to produce their skills for them."

http://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/at...echalert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=062112
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204422404576596630897409182.html

 

[Cogwulf]

It's probably a bit too late for me. I am however interested in specialising in nuclear materials which is vaguely related, although it seems somewhat uncertain at the moment about whether they'll be much of a future in it.

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

I would advise anyone to be rather cautionary about choosing a working field solely on the current demand for it. Of course, that can be one of the decision factors but one should weight in your own vocation and interests. I think this provides a much more solid chance of future payoff than choosing solely based on demand or solely on interests.

In fact, I was just reading a very interesting article about what companies requires vs candidate skills, and it gives the perfect example:

"Steven Cherry: Yeah, I think a good example of that was the IT job market, which has been sort of a roller coaster ride, except you can’t see where the highs and lows are.
Peter Cappelli: Right, and even when you can see them, the problem is it takes four years to get an IT degree. If you’re lucky, you get out in four years, and the problem with that is it could be a booming market when you enter, but by the time you get out, it’s a bust. And it’s pretty clear that that has happened to the IT world. As your colleagues and listeners probably remember, the IT recession in 1991, where on college campuses after that, people began to bail out of IT programs and switch to other fields. That class graduated about ’94–’95, which is just when the IT boom took off, and as real complaints about raising wages and high demand for those people. So then people poured into IT programs. They graduated about 2001, which was exactly when the next IT bust began. And so you got this problem, and you’re always going to have this problem if employers are relying on the schools to produce their skills for them."

http://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/at...echalert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=062112
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204422404576596630897409182.html

The difference being that there is not a "boom" in the power generation and distribution industry. Well, apart from the distortions in the market created by government sacred cow projects. Everyone is just getting old and retiring.