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A couple of weeks ago, UNC Charlotte established a new School of Energy in its engineering college, which was a little confusing. After all, in 2008, the university had built the Energy Production & Infrastructure Center, or EPIC, which still focuses on research and educating students to become utility engineers. Ostensibly, Charlotte already had a school of energy.
School of Energy Director Robert Cox explained what’s changing:
- It will absorb some existing students, classes and faculty from its engineering technology programs to study, primarily, grid automation and energy-component manufacturing.
- It will create new programs focused on the energy sector, such as manufacturing grid components.
- It will offer interdisciplinary courses taught by professors from other departments.
- Starting as soon as next year, it will offer new graduate-level programs, including specialized interdisciplinary graduate certificates.
- It will eventually hire new staff for roles specific to the School of Energy.
EPIC will continue as the research arm of the new school. But starting this semester, some students are now part of the engineering college’s School of Energy and will ultimately graduate with degrees in electromechanical, mechanical engineering technology, or applied energy.
The change may be more relevant to the captain than the crew. Much as a ship might adjust its heading during a long voyage, UNC Charlotte is responding to changes in the economic and technological waters.
This journey began about two decades ago, when energy experts warned that a retirement crisis was on the horizon. A 2007 report from the Center for Energy Workforce Development warned: “If aging workers do choose to retire en masse, companies will lose, along with them, a wealth of experience and institutional knowledge that cannot quickly be regained.”
It was the decade following the dot-com bubble; engineers were more interested in writing software to manipulate the grid than actually building it. Those who knew how to build transmission and distribution lines, transformers and other tech were getting old, and if universities didn’t refill the talent pool, it would dry out.
The state legislature allocated $76 million for EPIC, and the center set out to instruct future “engineers [who] knew about electric power and the utilities,” according to Cox.
Since then, seismic economic and technological changes promised to overhaul how we generate and transport electricity. The rise of artificial intelligence and cloud computing led utilities such as Duke Energy to forecast unprecedented load growth. Now, after a period of relatively flat demand, the utility is asking permission to add 12 new natural gas generators and more than double its solar capacity in North Carolina in less than a decade.
At the same time, an influx of renewable energy sources has transformed how we think about grid operation. Now, when you turn on the light switch, that power’s origin increasingly depends on the sun, the clouds, the summer breeze and what energy the utility has squirreled away in a giant battery vault.
“They do work,” Cox said, talking about the challenge of integrating renewables with fossil fuel and nuclear power plants. “They're just certain nuances and things that don't exist when you have nuclear, coal and gas as your primary sources.”
He said this meant the grid needed to evolve.
“Over the course of the next five years, we're going to see a tremendous load growth and a tremendous investment in modernization for the grid,” Cox said. “There are still retirements that are happening, but they also just need new people to build stuff.”
So UNC Charlotte adjusted its heading. The new School of Energy will focus on educating that next generation of “new people to build stuff.” And the school would educate these students in the heart of North Carolina’s grid development.
If Raleigh is the place where energy policy is written and approved, Charlotte is where those policies are carried out. The shadow cast by Duke Energy headquarters stretches — metaphorically — over a network of companies trying to solve for the state’s rising power demand and aging infrastructure. Heimdall Power is designing grid-enhancing technologies to help transmission lines move electrons more efficiently. The Electric Power Research Institute studies this kind of new tech, making grid expansion less of a gamble for utilities — and their investors. All have a footprint in Charlotte.
“People probably don't realize that, but there's some tremendous detailed subject matter expertise that exists in the private sector in Charlotte,” Cox said.
And all of them are watching this confluence of artificial intelligence and renewable energy, something that is creating what Cox calls “Grid 2.0.”
“We want to be the leaders of Grid 2.0 and produce the people that really operate and build that system,” Cox said.
