Ameren Illinois employees toured Illinois State University's new College of Engineering campus Wednesday while delivering a ceremonial check supporting its electrical engineering lab.
The $5,000 grant is going toward green energy programs within the college to build out a power lab aimed at training students to install and monitor solar and wind energy. Students will eventually have the tools to study the $16.5 million solar array planned for the property, aimed at reducing the cost of powering the new campus on G.E. Road in Bloomington.
Electrical engineering professor Md Shahin Alam said Ameren's support will give students the opportunity to get more hands-on experience with renewable energy technology.
“They will develop the work on the real systems, and they will get the data so that they can monitor how much energy we are saving, utilizing the green technology,” Alam said.
That's exciting for sophomore Owen Moore, an electrical engineering major who is interested in pursing renewable energy as a career.
“I'm excited to learn new things and just work on stuff," he said. "I'll be working in that lab once a week, and it'll be just new stuff every time."
Prototypes of a solar panel and wind turbine have already been added to the lab, giving students the opportunity to experience what it is like to work with the technology before being thrown into the field. Their training also opens the door to clean energy jobs.
“Once students are trained on how to monitor these panels and the energy they produce — the efficiency of the panels, the efficiency of the wind turbine — they study these and how to integrate that energy that's coming in from them into our regular power supply, which is the grid. They can then take this experience and start working on monitoring the solar farm that's being developed on this campus,” said Vijay Devabhaktuni, chair of ISU's electrical engineering department.
Training the future workforce
Ameren Illinois Director of Natural Gas Operations John Bozarth said the utility was excited to partner with Illinois State. The College of Engineering is also an exciting development for him personally: He attended ISU before majoring in engineering was possible. After some initial science coursework, he transferred to the University of Illinois.
“Ameren's here to support Illinois State and their new College of Engineering," Bozarth said. "It's something where we definitely have an interest in how technology evolves, and certainly the talent that Illinois State will produce in terms of engineers."
With the partnership in its infancy, Ameren extended an invitation to Illinois State students to apply for its internship program. And Devabhaktuni encouraged Ameren to suggest someone to serve on the college's advisory board with industry professionals to help inform the curriculum.
Bozarth said a top-notch engineering program in Central Illinois supports their own workforce of engineers and lineman while helping student development even if they go elsewhere. And staff in the college say being brand-new is a benefit, with a young faculty connected to the professional field; top-of-the-line, industry-standard equipment; and a flexible curriculum that's being adapted in real-time to the needs of students and employers.
“It’s about thinking through what students might face in terms of problems in their jobs, getting them an opportunity to see what some of those constraints are and solve some of those problems while they're in college," Bozarth said. “It's allowing them to develop that thinking. Not only can they solve the problems of today with today's grid, but what some of those challenges will be into the future.”
Hands-on learning
Much of the coursework using the new power lab is for juniors and seniors. With the college launching just a year ago — and the new campus open for just three days — labs supporting foundational courses like circuiting are fully operational. Having Ameren's support now, Alam said, allows him to build out that upper-level curriculum so it's ready when ISU's first class of engineers are due to need it.
“What we anticipate as a department is that they will first learn all the fundamentals of electrical engineering in sophomore year, and then in the junior and senior years is when we want to expose them to power system classes, power electronics classes, renewable energy classes. Then that could also lead to their senior design projects in the area of renewable energy and clean energy,” Devabhaktuni said.
Moore said he's enjoying his coursework, finding lab experience especially helpful.
“Obviously every engineering job would be different, but there is a lot of hands-on work that's involved with it," he said, "like if you're making your own hardware. I did a lot of soldering, melting metal together for a circuit, and that's a really important skill to have as an engineer."
Alam said any student who graduates from the electrical engineering program will be able to design their own home solar panel on their rooftop. This eliminates the need for students to go to outside sources when looking for new knowledge on clean energy systems. It also allows them to see how much energy they would need for their own home.
In Wednesday's conversation with Ameren employees, Devabhaktuni said the faculty is further inspired to be a steward for renewable energy in the community. Future ideas include adding a "solar hut" to the parking lot, where homeowners can learn more about monitoring energy use and adding renewable sources to their homes.
It's those sorts of initiatives Moore finds "really exciting."
"I just think the College of Engineering at ISU has a very bright future," he said.
