Help With Finding a Good School in the U.S. for Power Engineering?

[relex]

Hello everybody,

I am looking for a good school in the U.S. that specializes in Electrical Power Engineering. However I'm coming up short. I searched the forums to see if anyone else had discussed this topic, and couldn't find much, so I decided to make a post.

I'd be grateful to hear any helpful ideas.

 

[russ_watters]

Electrical engineering is one of the fundamental engineering disciplines and there are tons of good schools for it.

 

[berkeman]

Hello everybody,

I am looking for a good school in the U.S. that specializes in Electrical Power Engineering. However I'm coming up short. I searched the forums to see if anyone else had discussed this topic, and couldn't find much, so I decided to make a post.

I'd be grateful to hear any helpful ideas.

What do you mean by Electrical Power Engineering? That could mean power supplies, or motor drives, or lighting systems, etc. Or it could mean AC Mains power distribution systems and the Smart Grid. Which is the product line you want to pursue?

 

[relex]

Large scale, power grid stuff, not computer engineering and microchips and circuit boards

 

[mheslep]

You need not worry about high power for an undergraduate program if you attend a reasonably good quality school. You'll get all you need with undergraduate circuits, semiconductors, EM, physics, and a machines course (the latter might be an elective course).

Graduate school is another matter, and some schools have high power research specializations. Virginia Tech has had a good program for years - high power semiconductors, etc.

 

[jim hardy]

Try Auburn. Reason i say that is:

I always remembered one of my EE power instructors. He was a grad student at the time. His lectures were lucid and he was darn practical. I took an old car alternator to him that would no longer keep up with the headlights, and he helped me figure out it was just a three phase machine with rectifiers inside. That's how i came to really understand synchronous impedance, but i digress... (it only needed brushes and a bearing)

anyhow here's a link to some of his work.
http://www.eng.auburn.edu/~gross/readme.htm

google power systems auburn and it's evident there's something going on there.

also see EE-6600 series of courses here
http://bulletin.auburn.edu/coursesofinstruction/elec/

Dr Gross is probably retired by now, but he'll leave a legacy.

my two cents, and probably overpriced at that.

old jim

 

[relex]

mheslep, I appreciate your answer.

I'll keep that in mind when I'm looking at the classes at different universities, and try to verify such in my physics, etc. classes

 

[relex]

Thank you Jim for telling me about Auburn. I'm looking over your links right now

 

[dlgoff]

Hello everybody,

I am looking for a good school in the U.S. that specializes in Electrical Power Engineering. However I'm coming up short. I searched the forums to see if anyone else had discussed this topic, and couldn't find much, so I decided to make a post.

I'd be grateful to hear any helpful ideas.

Large scale, power grid stuff, not computer engineering and microchips and circuit boards

bolding by me

I definitely agree with mheslep. Power engineering is a sub-discipline of Electrical engineering. Besides you'll NEED to understand what I've bolded. e.g. The power grid has to be made safe and reliable using Protective Relaying which uses microprocessor based equipment and getting information/data from the equipment attached to the grid that's used to make the grid work is done with some kind of supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) which uses lots of circuit boards and wiring.

 

[meBigGuy]

Cal-Poly San Luis Obispo used to have two different degrees:
Electrical Engineering (POwer/motors/etc) and
Electronic Engineering (vacuume tubes, transistors, etc)

They also started with labs and actual elecrtronics classes in the first quarter.
Not sure what they have now. Also, San Luis Obispo is a beautiful place to live and go to school.

 

[FermiAged]

RPI used to have an Electric Power Engineering Dept. that offered degrees in EP engineering. When I attended in the late 1970's, those guys always had jobs. The program is now part of the ECSE Dept. but I see many of the faculty do EP research.