The GEARED initiative is educators working with industry to establish new and updated curriculum so that the next generation power systems workers are fluent in distributed generation technologies.

The two informational videos about GEARED and FEEDER – sponsored by Siemens and produced by PennWell – were released at the Siemens mega-booth at DistribuTECH 2016. Interviews with DOE, educators and students tell the GEARED story: how academia, government and industry are in sync developing a strong impact culture of the next gen power systems workforce.

This revitalized education is being developed in 16 universities and 19 affiliate schools by three consortiums: FEEDER (at University of Central Florida), MARMET (at Missouri Science and Technology) and GridED (at Electric Power Research Institute). There are 17 utilities, 18 industry and two national labs partners. IREC is the GEARED National Network Administrator, tasked with harmonizing everything. GEARED is a DOE SunShot funded program.

George Vellaringattu, a senior in electrical engineering at Georgia Tech and member of the GridED Student Innovation Board says: “I see myself in an industry that works to integrate renewable energy into the grid in order to keep the world environmentally friendly, cleaner and safer for everyone.”

Through 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 education framework that grows the expertise and preparedness of current and future electric utility sector professionals – specifically to accommodate high penetrations of solar electricity and other distributed technologies.