Originally published on the GEARED website
April 18, 2017

My entire educational experience, from kindergarten through post-secondary, was probably a lot like yours­ – the standard one teacher for one class. But an innovative curriculum sharing model from the FEEDER consortium (Foundations for Energy Engineering for Distributed Energy Resources) is launching today’s power systems engineering students and faculty into completely new learning frontiers. Makes me wish I were in school today.

With early funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s SunShot Initiative, the Grid Engineering for Accelerated Renewable Energy Deployment (GEARED) program was created to build a training and educational framework to grow the expertise and preparedness of current and future electric utility sector professionals specifically to accommodate distributed energy technologies onto the grid. The Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC) serves as GEARED’s National Network Administrator.

FEEDER, one of three consortium under GEARED, is proving multi-faculty instructional resources and expertise across eight FEEDER consortium institutions are greater than the resources and expertise within any single institution.

“Students from different universities now have access to curriculum that wouldn’t have been possible without the consortium, either because of lack of expertise or staffing limitations,” said Larry Holloway, Interim Dean, College of Engineering, University of Kentucky. “By offering different and diverse courses from experts, students increase their knowledge about renewable energy and power engineering issues, preparing them to take their place in today’s power systems engineering workforce.”

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