When I begin engineering school at Illinois Institute of Technology (Chicago),it was called Armour Institute (after some millionaire), and consisted of a dingy main building, a student union, and some shack-like structures scattered around the place in which I distinguished myself by failing everything except except history and english, and as a result being labeled a hopeless case and expelled. Some question must be asked as to why I was attending that institution, but as I explained during my lecture, being an engineer meant something in those days.

I have a feeling that it doesn't mean as much any more, and not just in the US. I've taught mathematical or energy economics in three engineering schools - Lisbon, Singapore and Bangkok - and in the last two I wondered what the hell was going on. The problem there, as everywhere else, is not the shortage of talent, but the exploitation of talent. Somewhere along the line the wrong people get their hands on that talent and reduce some of its capacity. By way of contrast, during WW2 the US started from almost nothing - i.e. an economy in the process of shaking off a depression - and produced industrial and military miracles (as well as some notable blunders).

That being the case, I move to the bottom line and utilize some backward induction, as it's called in game theory. What's the point in carrying on two useless wars and letting an industry as important as the utility industry deteriorate? Isn't it obvious to the leadership in the US - if not to the fans of daytime soap operas - that the utility industry means more for the personal satisfaction of US citizens than any outcome of those wars, given that on a value scale they have about the same significance as US military operations in Cuba and the Phillipines around the turn of the last century.

I could add a few more things to this comment, but I prefer to stop and be informed that I don't know what I'm talking about. Incidentally, that thing about 69% of Generation Y being hooked on environmental consciousness is a gimmick isn't it, like the dumb industry minister here in Sweden wanting to raise the number of windmills from 900 to 6000, although on a per-capita basis Sweden (and Norway) have the lowest CO2 emissions in the industrial world.

The bell tolls for Bell Labs -- Physics Today October 2008.

"We are coming out of an era," says Federico Capasso, who headed physical research at Bell before moving to Harvard University in 2003. "Until more or less now, research in industrial labs gave a huge edge to the US." But in today's global competition, he notes, "corporations can't afford to do medium- and long-term research in areas beyond their technology and business horizon. That's a fact, and we should not judge them for it."

The problem is MUCH deeper than a few mentoring initiatives can fix. I'd suggest corporate recruiters are likely starting to bone up on the Mandarin language, and cultural preferences of people in India. North America has become the world leader in production of scammers who know how to keep a hollow useless corporation's share prices five times higher than it deserves.

On the subject of coal, he acknowledged the problem (at least from potential regulation) with all of the CO2 emissions. But then he went on to state how much they have spent on some plants ($1 Billion or more on a single plant!) just to further reduce SOx, NOx and Hg emissions. They've done great work, cutting them by 80% or more.

That's great, but, um, that's not the long-term issue with coal. It's the CO2. I mean, if I went to a job interview and said I had just taken classes and was well-versed in COBOL, they wouldn't give me a job just because I made the effort, would they? Of course not. I appreciate what they've done for SOx, NOx and Hg emissions (though the Great Lakes have already been hit pretty good with the Hg, that horse has left the barn already, to some extent) but, I have to think they should have been looking ahead a bit further w.r.t. to possible concerns about CO2 emissions. (Note I am not getting into a GW debate, but noting the likely regulatory issues w.r.t. CO2.) I wanted to say "That's great, but so what?", but I didn't think that would be productive.

It was clear to me that the notion of not using coal for some utilities has a non-reality about it that they simply can't grasp. Not using coal is akin to removing 3 of their limbs.

Regarding nuclear, he noted that new plants may run $8-10 Billion or more! A huge number. Far higher than a new coal plant. I think nuclear is so much more expensive than coal (at least in terms of the initial cost) that it is a completely different mindset with the utility. A completely different train of thought. This different mindset is not apparent when you review the EIA fact of costs of coal vs. nuclear. A new nuclear plant is a WAY bigger deal for a utility compared with a new coal plant.

So anyway, I just wanted to comment that a certain disbelief is apparent even on the part of major utility heads. I guess you can't just change the game so drastically ("no more coal") and have these people able to continue to think rationally.

If you think of all the infrastructure tied to coal, all the mines, the trains, the loading and unloading stations; all that stuff set up to support coal; one can't just dismiss it and assume many won't be confused.

That all said, there is no TECHNICAL reason, as I see it, in building new nuclear plants instead of new coal ones, other than the hidden drive to keep supporting all that extant (coal) infrastructure.

Frankly, as somewhat of a nuclear 'shill' - to use Tam Hunt's description - it doesn't bother me at all. The Finns have had excellent experiences with nuclear, operating both 'Western' and Soviet equipment, and when they were considering increasing their output of electricity, nuclear seemed optimal. AND IT WILL BE PROVED OPTIMAL in the long run, and I'm not talking about the Keynesian long run where we are all dead. Once the nuclear ball really starts rolling, we will see nuclear plants constructed in the 4 years mentioned by Len Gould - from ground break to grid power - OR LESS, as a Japanese gentleman once assured me. As a matter of fact, if the Finns had started that installation later - or earlier for that matter, when interest rates were at rock bottom - it could have been a different story cost-wise.

With the American and British air forces pounding Berlin to bits, and the Soviet army in the suburbs of that marvelous city, millions of Germans forced themselves to believe that the war could still be won by their side. During my army service in Japan and Germany I had this explained to me many times, but I was too dumb or young or both to understand a great deal of what goes on in the heads of real people in the real world. but now I understand, and I think that on occasion it's absolutely and completely and totally pathetic. The same thing concerns the belief by many Finns that they could maintain or keep increasing their standard of living by renouncing nuclear and concentrating on renewables/unconventional sources of energy. Fortunately, on that occasion, the government of Finland country was not in the mood for that kind of romanticism.

Finally, important changes may be about to take place in the Russian electricity sector. It may include the same kind of nonsense that took place when they introduced electric deregulation in California. I don't know how the grid in Russia looks, but if it ties into the one in Finland, the new nuclear plant in Finland, with a capacity of 1600 MW, could turn out to be a beautiful investment.

It's for the proposed Fermi-III. I think about 1600 MW. Right next to Fermi-II, so siting is not an issue. (They are both in Monroe, Michigan, which feeds well to SE Mich, Ohio, and Ontario.)

I think there are some concerns that the capacity concerns are not as dire, given the economic situation, but it seems to me the main concern is about $$$. Some concerns about technology (these things haven't been built in awhile) but not so much about environmental/regulation. (I think the shared site must have dealt with a lot of those issues.)

I don't mean to be flip, the amount of energy from renewables can and should rise in the future. But what this says more than anything else is how slowly things will be able to change for the foreseeable future unless we take the unfavorable route of retiring working assets. An active conservation/efficiency program would save more energy than wind could generate with new construction. Probably a better use of resources at this point. (GWB shut that program down at the DOE when he took office, about 4 years before he told us we were "addicted to oil".)

How much energy is current produced by solar thermal? What is the biggest solar thermal plant built to date, worldwide even? Are there any even over 100MW?

I'm not dismissing solar thermal, or any other renewable. They just have very little market at this point.

Something I'm quite confident of is that if sufficient hard contracts were tendered now for perhaps 8 GW of solar thermal to be built from now to 2015 supported by free use of federal land in the southwest, federally arranged and provided cooling water (eg. a saltwater pipeline ?or canal? from Gulf of California) and a TVA-type interstate HVDC grid plan, you will see a healthy self-financing industry from then on with rapid growth and very likely providing the lowest cost electricity from any source available. Also, no doubt a faster jumpstart could be arranged by providing some certainty beyond 2015 provided certain criteria are met, in order to help amortize the required volume manufacturing plant. I believe it should be targeted to 1) shutting down the old coal plants which have been patched together haphazardly long beyond their design lifetimes in order to skirt the new-source pollution regs. 2) avoid construction of any new coal burners not having CO2 sequestration. 3) reducing use of Natural Gas for baseload.

Really, it won't affect nuclear development at all, and the costs to the government would be very worthwhile, both in local manufacturing and installation, and maintenance and operations tax base. Given future of petroleum supplies, its a lot smarter than implementing a huge federal works program to build new roads and bridges.

I don't have much trouble with that. You sound like you are voicing the Scientific American solution. My main issue there is the utility (usage) of the HVDC lines. Moving large amounts of power that far is somewhat unprecedented. Not that it's a technical challenge, but an economic one.

Look at it this way. Given the daily variation in electrical demand, any HV connection is going to have some excess capacity at some point, most likely at night. That's a wasted resource. Well, if the line is 100 miles long, that's one cost; if it's 3,000 miles long, that's another. I think correctly sizing these lines is highly problematic. Generating power thousands of miles away from consumers is problematic as well.

How much of the variation do you try to handle locally?

I'm not saying an interstate HVDC grid is a bad idea, but it is picking a winner, if subtly. Crasser folks might say we should just pipe water to the SouthWest rather than energy to the MidWest.

"Not to worry". Wall Street is not the same as Fund of Funds, the Social Hedges. (Do research). Who said the old chaps are retiring, or won't be able to retire? These old chaps, following the model of Bill Gates, out of their garages, being not only undercapitalized, but zero-capitalized, for the past decade, in secrecy, by brainstorming, invented all of these new disruptive technologies, which will replace the obsolete. These old chaps, for the same period, disgusted with the same old Regulatory status quo and with the Conglomerates behavior of not only curtailing better solutions, but virtually trashed-out these old chaps, will now be at their mercy. There will be no ?technology transfer? as sought by the Regulatory, nor there will ?commercialization? that will fall into the Public Domain. Who is to be blame for that fiasco? Who created the shortage of skilled, not laborers, but scientists, indubitably now coming out-of-the-box? (Again, do research) (Cautionary: May discover some very disturbing disruptive technology, aimed to control-the-market-by-tech and of not just of National, but of Worldwide implications).

?Renewable Energy Boys?. We all know the limitations and the fact that can not do reengineering beyond the Laws of Physics, Thermodynamics and Mother Nature, nor can twist such to entice and suit the Hedges. (The heck with Wall Street, since Wall Strippers never intended to entertained these in their garages old chaps, (the micron-caps), so let them bight Obama?s bullet, as of 01/2008). Commencing with multi-fuel hybridization and escalating to the max-out will not take another decade. The Governmental and the Regulatory bodies will not have the stomach, nor face the Political embarrassment, in the event of have to trash-out all of these enacted and codified into laws mandates. We, the Old Chaps are aware of that and now the Author of this article is seeking solutions by disclosing the facts. It is now is too late. It will take a decade to educate and transfer expertise to the novice. And who will do that? Other of age Novices? Do not look at the Old Chaps to be the mentors. The problem is real and in the mean time speculations is the best approach to the sought solution, so keep-on speculating. The only thing I can disclose is my name, Nick Panchev and age of 65. Hope you don?t find me in the Internet.

Number 3 seems like the more likely scenario for most.

There are surplus Engineers in Detroit and Engineers in Silicon Valley, and everywhere else where they seem to be layoffs, and they're dang smart and a whole lot more adaptable and willing to do anything than you give them credit for.

I'm one of them. Does a Semiconductor Engineer have the trianing to be a Power Engineer on the spot? No, but they aren't idiots. They can learn and they can learn fast. I'm an engineer in my mid 40's and I've completely re-invented myself so many times I've lost count.

That's what engineers are trained to do. When you graduated with a BSME or BSEE etc what you got was a paper that said you can learn lots of stuff, really fast, and apply it to real world problems. That's what that paper means.

The only problem is that you guys are looking for cheap engineering labor straight out of school, and you arne't going to find it. The guys coming out of school right now get paid nearly as much as I do, and they're nowhere near as good. HONEST.

So ... energy sages ... pull your head out of the sand, and quit complaining about there being no technical resources when they're staring you in the face. What you should be discussing is the best way to get such Engineers and technical specialists retrained for the jobs you have and will have coming up fairly soon now. Beleive me, it will be easier to train them than to train a newbie engineering student fresh out of college. Believe me ... I've worked with them, and I can't believe I was once so clueless.

Value experience, even if it isn't in your immediate field of work. Just be prepared for interesting resumes. Semiconductor Engineers, for example, change jobs every few years not because they're bad engineers but because that's the nature of the industry. Hire them. They'll be so grateful to be part of an industry with more stability and will prove it with their work ethic.

So what? Those 15 years he'll be just as productive as a guy straight out of school. Are you actually worried about having to train another guy in 15 years?

I know Utilities are a different animal altogether ... but you need to understand that while living in your little microcosm, the rest of the world has learned to bring people up to speed in life-critical jobs in very little time, and replacing a position after 15 years in the rest of industry is considered a luxury (and yes many of those jobs are in the health industry where you want as much permanence as possible).

Besides, chances are by then someone else will do the work to find people to fill that position.

What you're going to have to deal with is, in fact, some of the things Dana discusses here ... especially with regard to judging a candidate objectively. Don't let age fool you.

You're totally right. "Retirement" was an invention to get jobs for young people. You'll live a lot longer if you work a lot longer. There's a reason health usually goes down hill after retirement, and it only partially has to do with age. The main ingredient is lack of activity. It's up to power companies however to make a career worth working later into life. Some concessions will be necessary, and employees may need to take partial retirements while working half-time.

Frankly, I don't understand why that isn't done more now. It seems the best of both worlds. Especially when you're bringing in new people ... to keep some of the old sages around to get them trained and act as a guru as needed. May actually be cheaper than periodically bringing them in for outrageous consulting fees.

I cant imagine HV ever having excess capacity. Our consumption has linearly increased for dozens of years and is expected to continue to do so, while the bulk of our energy infrastructure is on the verge of non-compliance, while at the same time all new coal plant projects are being shut down for environmental reasons. What we have on our hands, my freind, is a train wreck in the making.

Another aspect often overlooked is the PHEV and EREV factor. If in 10 years just 10% to 20% of Americans are driving those cars as many pundits claim, it will put a big strain on the infrastructure.

Aging workforce, aging work force, aging work force; Power Generation companies have always embraced a herd mentality and aging workforce is no different. It would be actually be funny, but it hurts too much to laugh. It is easy to remember the past movements of the herd. In the early eighties it was build all the non nuclear plants you can it just going to cost more if you wait. Of course after Three Mile Island Nuclear was a dirty word. Then the nineties it going to be cheaper to buy power let some body else build it. Of course the summer 97 ended that shortsighted fantasy. This was shortly followed by cheap gas “Nat Gas was always going to be cheap.” After the turn of the millennia the battle cry became build a Nat Gas IPP plant in the competitions territory. In 2001 I went to the doctor to get a mole removed and it turned out it was not a mole but a small combined cycle Nat Gas IPP plant. Even with the stable supply of gas I would provide, the owners still couldn’t get an interconnection agreement so it went bankrupt. Luckily, the courts saved the company and its incompetent management only raping the shareholders.

Now, part of the herd has now turned it focus to the aging work force in the energy business. It is not an unjustified assumption to say that if Lindsay Lohan and Nikola Telsa applied for a job with a utility as a Generator Engineer that Lindsay would get the call. The logic would be simple Telsa just came back from the dead his health is questionable and besides he is a 152 years old he is bound to retire soon. Lindsay is young make her an offer. This is the current dilemma, should the most qualified person be hired or the youngest available reasonably qualified person be hired? The herd, like this article, is saying go young. In the real world this means when a qualified 30 year old and a more qualified 50 year old apply for the same job it makes sense to give the role to the younger qualified or almost qualified person. Even if it is in the utilities long term best interest to always promote or hire the younger candidate it doesn’t make it right or legal.

Unfortunately it gets even tougher when it is a training position to fill a critical role like System Operator. Should the person that has waited for almost his/her entire career to finally her/his shot at the role get it or would it make more sense to look beyond him/her for a person with more career in left front than behind. My conjecture is that gray haired old men just a stones throw from retirement themselves are selecting their replacements based more on age than any other factor and it is hype like this article that makes them feel justified in their choice. They are using legal department approved timed tested bullet proof selection programs to quietly circumvent age discrimination laws. They are still getting good people not only good but just as importantly young. My personal observations are much too limited to make valid conclusions from, but the continued rhetoric and fear mongering is assuring this is indeed the case. I think the 45 year old plus crowd is starting to get the message, “Our careers are over, we will be used in our current capacity until we retire or die. Advancement is for those not suffering from TMB (Too Many Birthdays) our careers and our contributions are all and all meaningless.” Having little value to my employer has been tough for me to accept.

As the early boomers start to retire, it would seem that now would be the time for the "tail" boomers, but what Jerry seems to be saying is that hiring strategies might leapfrog the tail folks and go straight for the Gen-X,Gen-Y types (BHO, born toward the end of the baby boomers).

Then suddenly I remembered something: the people who condemned me to retirement are mediocrities and/or ignoramuses, and things usually work out so that those same mediocrities and ignoramuses will also have to leave some day. That's when I feel good, a smile appears on my face and there is a song in my heart, and I continue on my way to the gym or the tennis court or the library or the jazz club or any place where I won't encounter those self same mediocrities and ignoramuses who are prepared to work night and day to destroy high quality education.

Two minutes after I landed in Bangkok last year as guest professor at the Asian Institute of Technology, an ignoramus asked me how old I was. I couldn't figure out why and told him. and a few weeks later somebody informed him that people my age are usually made to feel unwelcome on that campus. Shortly before leaving the university however the president of that institution asked me if I was willing to return this year, to which I replied that I would return if the Pope decided to appoint Osama to the College of Cardinals.

As for what this comment is all about, it's simple. When you deal with ignoramuses and mediocrities you have to deal with them on their level, because they don't understand anything else. Competence, dedication, and the irreplaceable human capital that is formed by years of work and education doesn't mean anything to them . In reality many of them find it offensive. I won't go into the details of how I handled this 'issue' whenever I got a chance, but on occasion it 'wasn't nothing nice'.

In other words, as Fred so eloquently put it above, there are mediocrities as opposed to meritocracies. "Jim" always complained about how most of the other EE's at his utility were already marking time, showing up for "work" but doing as little as possible and counting down the days to retirement, when what was different was apparently the showing up for "work" part. Jim on the other hand had ambition, and was jealous of me because I was on the other side of the fence, the one Mr. Austin points out. He shocked his colleagues by quitting (gasp) a virtually guaranteed until 65 job with relatively good pay and benefits, to strike out on his own.

As anyone who's been on the Silicon Valley side of the fence knows, the risks are high and the rewards substantially higher than the relatively staid utility business. I wish I could say Jim made out as well as some, but he wasn't so lucky. On the other hand, he had more fun by far. Even though he's gotten pretty gray by now, what I believe would be the smartest move by the utility is to hire him back, to be in CHARGE of the EE's. Someone with entrepreneurial spirit can easily convert that to Intrapreneurial leadership, and what I'd already observed with Jim while at the utility was how he attracted a group of likewise motivated folks, who suddenly were working overtime and had smiles on their faces as they eagerly took on exciting new challenges. Of course this will never happen, engineering management will always go to someone who has been there forever, is part of the system and part of the problem. Even IF they interview bright young candidates from engineering schools, the candidate has to balance the lifetime of boring work he'll face versus the excitement (and risk) of the Silicon Valley opportunities.

The fact is, if I were at a utility today, I would GLADLY hire EE's who had digital design experience, because compared to what they've done, the EE work at a utility is relatively pedestrian. The problem of course is the HR crowd, who will simply dust off their previous job placement ads (from 10 years ago) and resubmit them, and the ad won't allow for the kind of outside the box thinking that David demonstrates. More's the pity. A little outside the box thinking never hurts, and often is just what the doctor ordered to solve intractable problems, or capitalize on new opportunities. Silicon Valley engineers taking over utilities, creating the kind of dynamic that has given us Moore's Law. Sigh, nice daydream while it lasted...

This allows the best of both worlds. Companies retain the skills of the older workforce AND they are allowed to work in an environment virtually free of the 9 to 5, 65 and out stigma that Jeff talks about above. There is also the opportunity to guide and train the younger work force...something I truly enjoy doing.

However the key question of who will replace us when we are literally no longer around (6 feet under) is paramount. There is a dearth of young people in general (thanks to the idiotic concept that North America is overpopulated) which is at the root of the problem and there is an even greater shortage of young people willing to take up engineering. It's much more glamorous and sexy to be a Wall Street financier, lawyer, accountant and (dare I say it) a professor of economics than it is to be an engineer that makes electricity every day.

Fortunately the governments of Asia (China, India and Korea particularly) have placed high value on science and engineering skills with the result that many of the engineers we so deperately need are coming from those countries.

It is of course the direct outcome of the baby boom generation's preoccupation with downplaying (almost to the point of extinction), the role of motherhood in our society. With Mothers having fewer children we have less children. With less children the school population goes down. With less school kids there are fewer teenagers going to College and University and even less of those are taking up science and engineering. So having no-one to replace us is an obvious outcome of having fewer children...what did we expect?

The narrow minded hiring practices of utility companies has exacerbated the problem for sure but it is not the cause of the problem. Graduating 50,000 lawyers a year and about 1000 petrochemical engineers means you will have lots of lawyers driving Mercedes and no-one making the fuel required to make them go. The long term outcome of that is as clear as day and yet we continually support the continuation of that course of action. How many TV shows glamourise the role of the lawyer or criminal investigator....dozens. How many TV shows do the same for science and engineering - none. Are we REALLY surprised fewer and fewer kids want science or engineering any more.

But for those that are still willing to work this shortage presents a once in a lifetime opportunity that is not to be missed. Quite unique in history.

For my own part I have never found the utility industry boring. I worked with some truly wonderful people and do not regret a minute of time I spent working there. To be part of the effort to construct and operate some of the worlds largest nuclear power plants was a rewarding and exhilerating experience and any young engineers in the business are going to be similarly rewarded...and paid a lot more than I was!!!

Malcolm

The concept of a 13,000 horsepower motor being as big as a house seemed to be completely foreign to many.

I hate to say it but "in my day" it was not possible to obtain any type of engineering degree without hundreds and hundreds of hours in the engineering labs. It was well over 25% of the final mark as I recall.

Apparently that is no longer the case. Sad to say our engineering colleges appear to have succumbed to mediocrity.

And as for your age Fred...an intelligent mind is an intelligent mind - years on the planet have nothing to do with it. Since we need much more of the highly intelligent thinking you are capable of I would suggest that those who have the audacity to ask your age should be told it is none of their business.

I am sure in your own inimitible way you did just that. Well done.

Malcolm

Well, normally I take between 5 and 10 years off my age, depending on the time of day. As for that business in Thailand, I had just gotten off a plane and probably had only slept 2 hours in a 10 hour flight. Otherwise I might have taken between 10 and 20 when that moron asked.

As I might have noted, in the faculty at the engineering school IN Bangkok where I was they want retirees off the premises. I dont blame them. It's these retirees who are responsible for the present situation, where ignoramuses are allowed to teach. But you are right about this population myth where North America is concerned, Steve Forbes, the ignorant CEO of a great magazine once thought that the US population was too low: he was thinking of course of a conventional war with China. The late economist Julian Simon also a a belief about population that would have classified him as a criminal degenerate had he not been a professor: he though that the more people the better, because then there would be more brainpower. Here I suggest a ratio: BRAINPOWER/POPULATION. Take the limit of that as population approoaches infinity.

About the engineering colleges succumbing to mediocrity. I have no doubt about this, because the beliefs of the lawyers and MBAs who are becoming more important in industry is that when they need engineers they can recruit them in e.g. China, India, Russia, East Europe, Mexico - anyplace where the engineering schools are not commanded by ignoramuses, as in their own countries. Medicine might be going that way too. My favorite example though is the Australian School of Infantry, whose commander is a woman. I wonder how she would have enjoyed doing pushups on concrete covered with snot and spit, as we used to do, while sergeants stood behind us cursing and questioning our manhood.

Funny thing about lawyers. Unlike other professions, like CPA's for instance, the huge numbers of lawyers isn't an economic detriment. The reasoning for that comes from this old saw:

A lawyer moves to a small town and hangs up his awning. He figures there will be divorces, business failures, arguments, lots of business. Six months later, he's starving, and is getting ready to leave town. Then another lawyer moves in. Six months later they're both driving Mercedes.

When there's only one lawyer, no reason to hire him, you and Joe can work it out, but when Joe hires a lawyer, now you have no choice. I often wonder how nice our society would be if we had 1.3 million engineers instead of lawyers. Maybe we'd have those flying cars and moving sidewalks of 1950's sci fi.

BTW at my house we're in our 5th year of record cold. Can I sue those global warming scientists for failing to deliver on their promises? :)

I will contend, with respect, that most companies are actually looking for those mid-level (maybe high 30s, mid 40s) Engineers in the industry, they just don't exist and resort to entry-level and justify with low salary. Good news is, they are more and more willing to wake up and actually pay the experienced what they are worth. The skills you all have ARE IN HIGH DEMAND and once the economy turns up a bit, these companies will clamour for your services.

Malcolm