Register ASAP: Climate Solutions teams up on PSU Smart Grid class

Registration is is now open for PSU’s Designing the Smart Grid for Sustainable Communities, Version 2.0. Enrollment options are available for both graduate students and business and community leaders interested in professional development.

The transition to the new paradigm suggested by the Smart Grid - the set of emerging concepts, technologies, applications, and business models intended to transform the nation’s century-old, centralized power grid into a climate, renewable-energy-and consumer friendly “Smart Grid" - presents many challenges that will require collaboration and creative problem solving from many of our best minds in a variety of fields, including some that are far removed from the traditional electric utility industry and not often in communication.  It will also require understanding, participation, and support of elected leaders, public administrators and planners, the business community, engineers, information technology innovators, and many others.  

To best prepare students and professionals for active participation in the development of the Smart Grid, the course series offers a cross-disciplinary approach, deepening individual areas of expertise in the context of teamwork.  The first term develops a solid Smart Grid literacy, while the second term applies this knowledge base to specific case studies.  Examples of likely case studies include demonstration efforts on battery storage and its role in demand response, integration of electric and hybrid vehicles, use of Smart Grid and other clean energy technologies in an urban eco-district, and incorporating the Smart Grid into a broader effort to develop a sustainable community. Graduate students will be offered a rare opportunity to collaborate in small groups with industry professionals.

Both terms include lectures, active learning strategies, individual and group projects, class presentations from guest speakers and seminar participants, and field trips.  The series concludes with a closing regional conference that gives course participants to present their findings along with those of regional and national experts.

The course faculty this year includes:

• Jeffrey Hammarlund, Adjunct Professor, Mark O. Hatfield School of Government, Portland State University, and President, Northwest Energy and Environmental Strategies;
• Conrad Eustis, Adjunct Professor, Portland State University, and Director, Retail Technology Development, Portland General Electric; and
• Linda J. Rankin, Adjunct Professor, and Research Scientist, Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science, Portland State University

Other nationally and regionally known Smart Grid experts, including founding members of Climate Solutions,  will join us for selected classes.  Assuming there is sufficient enrollment, students will have the opportunity to present at and learn from other nationally known experts during our concluding regional conference, tentatively scheduled for June 15.  Senior elected officials, and government and business leaders from throughout the region will be invited to attend this concluding conference. 

The course will be offered on Tuesday evenings from 7-9:40 pm beginning on January 12.

For on-line registration and additional information, visit our course website or call Christine Hanolsy, Executive Leadership Institute’s Natural Resources Program Coordinator, at (503) 725-5114. For questions about course content and approach, call Professor Jeff Hammarlund, Mark Hatfield School of Government, PSU, at 503-249-0240.

Worth noting...

Feedback on last year’s version of this course was very enthusiastic, reaching senior leaders at the US DOE and leading to a major stimulus grant proposal for clean energy education and training.  If the proposal is accepted, this course will become a piece of a larger regional effort – the Northwest Center of Excellence on Clean Energy –  a proposed collaboration among four Northwest universities, numerous community colleges, BPA and most of the region’s utilities, Pacific Northwest National Lab, and many other parties.  Word on grant approval is expected at the end of the month.