1. 1. That a job like this even existed! Reflecting back to when I was in high school and planning for college, I wasn’t really sure what career path I should. No one ever talked about the suffering utility companies across the country would soon be experiencing because such a high majority of their qualified workforce would be getting ready to retire. This means so much opportunity is out there for people like me.
2. 2. That it’s dollar bills flowing through power lines, not just megawatts.
3. 3. How ESSENTIALLY IMPORTANT it is to eat healthy and exercise when one of your job requirements states “Must be able to sit for long periods of time.” YOU WILL GET FAT if you don’t take care of yourself. I did.
4. 4. That the utility industry has so many different acronyms and abbreviations for absolutely everything, take just the letters “TP” for example. Depending on the context, this could mean Transmission Provider, Transmission Planning, Technical Procedure, Technical Planning or Tariff Protocol. Good rule to follow: if you’re not sure, ask.
5. 5. How truly reliable our electric grid is in North America. I pictured myself responding to several emergencies throughout a normal shift. However, the reality is that your bosses prefer to see you sitting at your station calmly, not doing very much at all versus furiously toiling away. How many people can say that about their job? This is the complete opposite of every other job I have had in life.
6. 6. That absolutely everything you say and do while you are at work is being recorded. With every swipe of your badge and walk through a door, every phone call you dial, every click of the mouse and every stroke on the keyboard, teams of people (the scariest of which are lawyers) are nearby with the sole purpose of making sure you are being 100% compliant with all federal laws and company policies. And then, once a quarter, your recordings will be played back to you in a room filled with your peers who will also critique you and confirm no laws or policies have been violated. All this to say , clear concise communication is IMPERATIVE. Quickly you will learn that it is not ok to use the phrase “Okie dokie” in lieu of the correct response “That is correct.”
7. 7. Being competent at your job is important, but it is only a fraction of everything that is needed to do your job well. There will come a time when you need help or are asked for help. The trust you have in each other needs to be solid. Your ability to get along with your coworkers and keep a good attitude comes into play more than I initially thought, especially on those long days of travel, training and night shifts.
8. 8. I had no idea how much accounting there was in this job. We call it “Balancing and Interchange” but it really should be called “Accounting and Number Matching.” Every megawatt has to be accounted for, every day. I highly recommend reading glasses.
9. 9. That the most important part of your desk is not the computers you are working on for the next 12 hours, but it’s the chair you are sitting in. Not everybody is made the same. Pick a good one or it’s going to be a long shift.
10. 10. That the people in this industry are some of the best folks you’ll ever meet. I had a preconceived notion that a lot of them would be cold, calculating machines. But they truth is they are some of the friendliest people anywhere.

This Workshop is for these electric power managers who are concerned about how they will be able to fill positions that will open due to retirements or loss of employees to other firms. The workshop discusses the most effective approaches to train people for real life electric power management and leaderships roles. The workshop uses military, sports, and tribal approaches coupled with video tutorials, simulations, and the importance of experience. •What models of leadership are most effective. •What skills are required at what levels. •How are skills and knowledge measured and used as feedback. •Competition and cooperation, how to use both in developing. •How to set up a program, budget it, and carry it out. Work shop is for executives, business line managers, human resource managers, and trainers.

Chair: Mr. Fred Fletcher, Assistant General Manager, Burbank Water & Power
Speaker(s): Matt Sadinsky, CEO, Prequalified Ready Employees for Power (PReP Intl)

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Last December, I was asked to join US Senator Kay Hagan’s workforce development roundtable meeting in Charlotte, NC. As CEO of PReP Intl and Cofounder of SOS Intl, it seems our perspective focused on Preparing Tomorrow’s Energy Professionals, added something to the serious conversation of putting Americans back to work. We discussed some startling facts:

Ѳ There are 14 million unemployed, almost 12 million underemployed yet 3.3 million job openings go unfilled for months on end,

Ѳ Roughly half of all employers report having a hard time finding qualified workers especially in technical fields.

Ѳ The gap between employer needs and workforce skills is starkest in the critical areas of STEM education, and schools cannot respond with enough graduates in STEM (Science Technology Engineering & Math) related fields.

The President’s Jobs Council on Skills for America’s Future initiative concluded we have a real challenge preparing tomorrow’s workforce to compete in the global economy. In the Energy industry, this poses especially difficult challenges at home, because our Electric power grid and power delivery infrastructures are old.

Old systems have higher failure rates with more interruptions, higher inspection, maintenance, repair and restoration costs affecting reliability, the economy and society. Obsolete system layouts require upgrades, additional substations and rights-of-way that cannot be easily sited. This often forces overuse of existing assets in ways they were not originally intended nor designed for.

Traditional tools and methods for power delivery planning and engineering are less effective in addressing current problems of aged equipment, obsolete system layouts and modern deregulated loading levels. Add smart grid features like variable load shedding schemes, generation sources like wind and solar and you have the makings of a perfect storm.

Mash these issues into the changing cultural values taking place as the power grid continues to evolve from the remnants of the vertically integrated industry it once was to today’s hybrid deregulated industry, and there is a crisis coming in finding and training qualified ready talent to design, engineer and operate it.

While an Energy Technology (ET) Revolution is already here, our power grid issues are made more complex by the policy issues they raise:

Ѳ Making mining and burning coal safer and cleaner than ever before;

Ѳ Finding and safely using our own oil, coal and gas sources;

Ѳ Building new safe nuclear power plants for the 1st time in over 30 years;

Ѳ Getting off dependence on foreign oil and lighting up the world in effective ways;

Ѳ Figuring out how to make electric and hybrid vehicles run longer for less cost/mile;

Ѳ Integrating solar, wind, tides, geothermal, algae, bio mass generation into the power grid;

Ѳ Conserving electricity, water, gas and all natural resources;

Ѳ Producing and using energy in a globally sustainable way.

And while there will be great careers in each of these areas, it is not clear that today’s K-12 system can lay the proper foundation and that our colleges and universities can develop problem solving skills and expertise fast enough to fill the gap once hundreds of experienced industry professionals begin to retire as the economy heats up. Some have predicted “that sucking sound you will hear” as hundreds of experienced utility professionals retire is knowledge walking out the door.

Since 2002, we have trained over 10,000 men and women who run the power grid. In a recent NY Times Article we were mentioned as having developed one effective way to begin to bridge this gap by training veterans, recent college grads and displaced professionals. The industry recognizes that it cannot do it alone. Partnerships between K-12, community colleges, universities, the military and industry will be required to prepare tomorrow’s energy professionals.

Partnerships are not easy to start and often harder to maintain. That is why programs like the TEDxCharlotteED program in Charlotte on March 28th, 2012 are so important. It begins to celebrate the kinds of success that partnerships can bring. As Charlotte leaders explore what is required to become an Energy Capital in this decade, figuring out how our schools, community colleges, universities and energy organizations can partner best will likely provide the only way to bridge this chasm and maybe serve as a model for others. Register for TED here. For more info on PReP Intl, click here or call 704.752.6414.

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Click here to read the press release.

Any one working today, with health insurance, is hanging on.  Well crafted plans for retiring at an age certain seem to have gone out the door as more and more neighbors, kids and grandkids fear or get laid off, or struggle to find work.  Thousands of college graduates and talented veterans are scampering to land that first job in an arena/sector where they want to build a career.  As months go by, in many cities and states – finding any meaningful job has become a struggle.

Meanwhile, savings for retirement have dwindled, 401(k)’s have become 201(k)’s and plans for selling the family home to downsize or relocate to warmer climes have all gone out the window or at least been put on the shelf.  Borrowers can’t get loans and sellers still can’t believe new normal home values or refuse to accept new normal prices.  The home sales market will take years to self-correct. 

In the energy industry, the number of talented professionals with skills, knowledge, experience and the numbers (age + service) to walk out the door at thousands of munis, co-ops, public and private power companies is building like pressure behind New Orleans levees.  This has the makings for the perfect storm. 

When the economy rebounds, and it will – slowly but surely, as stimulus monies, new technologies and increasing need for more generation, better integration of renewables and electric vehicles bring new means of storage, distributed generation, and a resurgence in safe clean nuclear power comes with smart grid load management and new approaches, old energy organizations will need to begin hiring.

At the same time there is a well known problem brewing in our education systems – no place is this case better made than in this dramatic wonderful and entertaining video.

Learning Without Frontiers – Sir Ken Robinson

At PReP Intl we are already beginning to carry the message to K-12, working with Community Colleges and University’s and welcome the opportunity to develop new scholarship and prequalification programs with our clients and partners to prepare tomorrow’s generations for the Energy Technology (ET) Revolution.  The power of energy will soon become clearer.  The challenge is to provide solutions for both what ails education while rebuilding our infrastructure to meet tomorrow’s needs.  We need to put Americans back to work trained and ready for work in power.

Motion Power has developed a technology that can harness the kinetic energy generated by a moving automobile and convert it into usable power to further run the vehicle. When a vehicle in motion slows down (brakes) energy is lost in the deceleration. Motion Power’s technology works as an “external regenerative brake” that draws energy from the vehicle as it slows down, then unleashes that power as an alternative fuel to help it speed back up again.

Read more – and watch a video! – here.

“We’ve been dedicating resources to developing new technologies, including making investments in early-stage renewable energy companies,” stated Rick Needham, green business operations manager at Google. “Smart capital includes not only these early-stage company investments, but also dedicated funding for utility-scale projects. To tackle this need, we’ve been looking at investments in renewable energy projects, like the one we just signed, that can accelerate the deployment of the latest clean energy technology while providing attractive returns to Google and more capital for developers to build additional projects.”

Read more here.

Read more here.