Designing the Smart Grid for Sustainable Communities

New Class Start Date: March 30, 2009

Note: Seminar participants who enrolled for Winter Term received early registration priority for Spring Term. While most Winter Term participants have decided to continue, a few have decided not to reregister. We have also decided to increase the maximum class size very slightly. Therefore, we have a limited spaces available for both PSU students interested in receiving graduate credit and others interested in registering under the professional development option.  Registration for new participants will open on March 19. New registrations will be accepted in the order they are received. To register for either the graduate credit option or the professional development option, click here.

An Interdisciplinary Approach to Energy Planning for Sustainable Communities

This two-term course series will examine a set of emerging concepts, technologies, and models of system planning and delivery for electricity that are expected to transform the nation's century-old, centralized power grid into a climate and alternative-energy-friendly "Smart Grid."

Objectives and Scope

Visionaries believe that this emerging "internet for energy" will enable individuals and businesses alike to participate in both the quality and quantity of energy they use to live and work, generating and storing energy from multiple sources and managing the amount and timing of their use of that energy. The Smart Grid will integrate generation from both directions - home/business and central station plant - and move it as needed to a managed load shape, incorporating solar panels, wind farms, fuel cells, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, and other energy sources into a vast, intelligent network used at far higher capacities than today.

The concepts, technologies, and models addressed by this course hold the promise of a significant new paradigm for the use and delivery of electric power that is more efficient, sustainable, robust, flexible, and environmentally sound, and that encourages a much higher level of consumer participation and control.

The course series stresses a cross-disciplinary approach, deepening individual areas of expertise in the context of teamwork. Each quarter will build on progress from the previous quarter. It will include lectures, active learning strategies, individual and group projects, class presentations from guest speakers and seminar participants, field trips, and a closing conference.

Target Participants

• Graduate students in engineering, information technology, public administration/policy, urban planning, business, and economics and related fields. The course will include projects that draw on the interdisciplinary skills of all course participants to develop group collaboration, communication, and problem-solving skills that have become so critical for modern organizations and networks.
• Current and emerging leaders from the utility, information technology, public administration, urban, transportation and water resource planning, business and other fields who are interested in understanding about and participating in the emerging transition toward the Smart Grid and a Participatory Network model that enables consumers to actively manage their electricity consumption and sell back to the grid the surplus power they generate.