According to the internet’s version of the encyclopedia called Wikipedia, the Electrical Technologist is defined in this way: "Electrical Technologists are people that apply electrical theory on the job. Their knowledge and skills lay between that of electrical engineers and general electrical trade’s persons. They train in three year diploma programs at colleges or universities. Specializations within the field include instrumentation, power, telecommunications, programming and electronic controls. Electrical Technologists are employed by utilities, engineering drafting/design companies, offshore refineries, and construction."
The average Electronics Technician that works within the electrical utility field came up through the ranks while working in the electrical utility at a time when the installation, repair and troubleshooting of equipment to “keep the power flowing to homes and businesses” consisted of power generated by gas, coal, oil and steam fired generators. These generators produced the electricity and sent it through central substations where it was then distributed to various homes and businesses.
These systems, although much more involved than most people understand, is relatively simple in design and yet involves a number of people to run the generators, maintain the substation transformers and switching apparatus, build and maintain the transmission and distribution lines, connect the service to the meter point for the customer and makes repairs and troubleshoot lines and customers distributions.
The meter point is thought of as the point of demarcation. In other words, anything before the meter is maintained by the power company and anything after the meter is maintained by an electrical contractor retained by the customer at the customer's expense.
The Public Utility Commissions (PUC) were set up to oversee, provide advice and help set the rates that the power utility companies could charge the customer for the use of the power in their homes and businesses. While this should be fairly straight forward and a fairly simple formula based on the cost of delivering the electricity, it can get pretty complicated. Included in these costs were the O & M costs (Operation and Maintenance) and the cost of the fuel source used to power the generator. Any additional plants or improvements usually meant the utility had to go before the PUC to determine a rate of return on these improvements. The O & M costs and fuel adjustments were passed on directly to the customer on a dollar for dollar basis. Capital improvements provide for a rate of return on the investment as set by the PUC.
The business and the type of people needed to run this sort of business model were much the same from utility to utility.
Eventually newer sources such as nuclear generating plants came on line and the ability to generate power in excess of their customer’s needs was realized.
In the continental United States, this excess power began to be exported to other service areas through an expansion of the electrical grid. The grid then became inter-tied with other utility grids to help provide a more stable source of power.
As the grid inter-tie grew,the majority of the larger utilities were sending their power out over thousands of miles and at times receiving power from thousands of miles away. This led to revamping the PUC’s roles into looking at the grid more nationally than just locally.
This also led to the deregulation of power rates in order to provide the utilities with the ability to structure pricing around the supply and demand of electricity. While the deregulation and grid inter-tie between various utilities was hailed as a perfect way to insure there was enough power “brokered” throughout the United States, it also had its own set of flaws. Maintaining the infrastructure of the grid created some gray areas of responsibility. There have been times when one utility’s system might be set up or maintained differently than another utility’s was and this has led to some fairly major “blackouts” of the electrical grid. These blackouts, which generally came at the worst of times, could lead to extended outage periods, during which various utilities had to disconnect from the grid just to keep their system up and running, leaving other systems with a lack of power until the reason for the failure was determined.
With a major grid so inter-dependent on many smaller ones, many times the trouble could be caused by some fairly simple problems, such as an operator error, a tree branch or even an animal getting across the lines.
In the past, the means that are used for protecting these various lines in the event that there was a “short” or “open” was generally handled by an operator, his equipment or some type of mechanical relaying equipment that would shut down a line until the fault could be cleared.
Over time and out of the necessity to improve the way the overall grid worked and operated with other grids, there has been a number of advances to design and build more automated and technologically advanced systems to monitor, control and correct for system faults.
As newer technologies came on line, more often than not, it was driven more by the marketplace of suppliers and the cost to implement. This has led to a grid that now supports hundreds of different types of equipment brands and many standards.
Throughout the years, the IBEW union responsible for the electrical workers, implemented training programs to bring workers from just wiremen to more advanced electrical workers, technicians and engineers.
The jobs that support the utility industry were definitely changing. With the changes, the people that performed these job functions were often at a point where they had to adapt, learn and try to make sense of where it was all headed. Many of the “old timers” and more “seasoned veterans” in the utility field eventually found it was time to retire or be forced to learn a wide variety of newer technologies and ways to implement and maintain them. Many chose the retirement path because of the years and age they had built up and in some cases the utility companies offered severance packages in order to contain their costs and the number of employees. The utilities were hoping that by lowering their number of employees they could offset the costs that they were beginning to see associated with all the new equipment investment. Unfortunately, in many cases the “brain drain” left the utilities with a lack of experienced personnel.
This created a situation where less experienced personnel had to step up and replace people that had many years experience. As is the case with rapidly evolving technology, this was a mixed bag of blessings. On one hand the utilities were losing personnel that in many cases had the knowledge in their heads, rather than documented in outdated prints and manuals, and yet on the other hand, the newer employees were being given the chance to learn a new way of doing the work without having their minds too cluttered by the old way things were done.
It was during this period that I got involved in the utility field. My bosses were the first generation of actual technicians that were trained specifically for communications, instrumentation, SCADA and many other technical duties.
Working for a rather small utility located on an island in the pacific, we were not faced with the same trials and tribulations that our mainland counter parts had to deal with. Our grid fed primarily our own customers and except to purchase some power from outside providers such as the sugar plantations, we produced all the power that was used on the island.
When I began my utility career, we had just swung over from the use of an old power line carrier system called the REDAC (the first generation of remote control and monitoring), that provided some control and visibility between the power plants and major sub-stations, to a more modern computer system. This modern computer system took up an entire room and support area to operate. With the additions of a few newer RTU’s (Remote Terminal Unit) added, as well as some improvements to the sub-stations and grid, this gave the company the ability to have more control and visibility over the major portions of the electrical system.
Our dispatch at one time had consisted of a single man in a cubicle, fielding calls from customers and then using a radio to dispatch service personnel, while also communicating with the operators at the power plant over land lines. Over time the dispatch had started to grow to become a room of it’s own. The new dispatch center was then equipped with state of the art CRT’s (Computer Monitor Screens) and the ability to remotely view and control many aspects of the system. From this one location the dispatcher was able to watch the system, communicate with the power plants and work with field personnel via our radio system.
As it goes with technology, this led to adding even more RTU’s in the substations in order to provide greater control and monitoring of the system. The dispatch center expanded to include more people in order to support it and we were well on our way to a newer, more modern, system.
In addition to the build out of our SCADA (Supervisory Communications and Data Acquisition) system as the new computer was referred to, there was a need to increase communications to the field and throughout the company, which by this time included three utilities on 5 islands. This was done in a variety of ways.
The most common was the use of telephone lines to connect between locations. Leased telephone lines provided decent communications, but then left the power company’s operation at the mercy of the telephone company’s support personnel and its infrastructure. Eventually our utility was determined to run more of our own copper cable between locations as the expense could be justified and to also switch much of our communications over to our own microwave radio paths.
Over a period of approximately 15 years the system went from a hands on system that was dependent on personnel in the field using either radios or calling in by landlines, to a newer more modern system that could be viewed and operated remotely by a handful of people from a central location.
There was still a need for the support personnel because operations in the field, although remotely controlled, still needed to have many other functions done manually and also verified to insure safety and operation. The new computer, while considered the “state of the art” also required regular maintenance and a technical crew just to keep it running most of the time.
During the mid 1990’s our technology began to morph even further. We had out-grown the capability of the old SCADA and RTU’s and it was time to upgrade to the latest “state of the art” equipment.
The old SCADA computer was replaced with a new system utilizing computers that look more like what we would envision a desktop computer to look, (at least during the 90’s and into 2000). The computer brought with it a new way of “talking” to the RTU’s, although there were still communication translation issues to deal with, the older RTU’s were kept operational at many locations.
Eventually even the RTU’s succumbed to being replaced for newer advanced and computerized versions. So as the cost and time permitted, the old RTU’s were replaced with newer RTU’s and our ability to control and monitor the system increased , but technology continued to change.
By this time, the technicians that had been accustomed to repairing boards with soldering irons and replacing components on boards, cleaning and maintaining connections and mechanical relaying equipment, soon found themselves having to learn how to troubleshoot equipment on just a board level and to use computers to analyze the problems. The test equipment that was then being used began to change and even laptop computers started to be seen in the company. Things were changing and the pace was picking up.
Soon after having replaced the old RTU’s in the field, we found ourselves again having to add RTU’s in areas that never had them previously. The system was growing.
Along with all this SCADA expansion came the need to increase and improve our communications structure. We began upgrading our communications “backbone” by replacing old analog and digital microwave radio systems that carried much of the data from the field RTU’s, as well as connecting our utility to our parent company based on the island of Oahu. This system alone involved microwave equipment on five islands in order to tie all three “sister” companies together, along with the utilities that were absorbed by our parent company.
Once again, we as technicians found ourselves involved not only in replacements and additions of SCADA equipment, but replacement and additions of microwave sites and equipment, as well as, the on-going replacement and upgrading of our two-way radio systems. This alone represented radio sites on three islands with over 300 radios in vehicles and handheld portable radios. In addition, we now had to learn about trunking radios and their protocols.
The build out of fiber optics systems began to take place and we as technicians had to learn how to install, splice, troubleshoot and maintain these fibers for our communications and SCADA backbone.
Our cellular communications grew with the introduction of newer and smaller cellular telephones, adding as many as 70 cellular telephones to our area of responsibility. Throughout all these projects, upgrades and additions, we were still faced with our normal routines of calibrating and repairing instrumentation for field equipment and personnel’s meters. The transducer instrumentation was crucial to providing the information that SCADA needed from the RTU’s. For a shop of less than 5 people, we found ourselves accomplishing the work that normally would fall to several sections in other utilities.
Throughout this time we would receive some training as new equipment came in, generally a one shot deal and often times it would be done ahead of the installation and before we really understood just what we were getting into. Any additional training was often restricted to the occasional salesperson/trainer that would come to Hawaii and give us a brush up crash course when pressed to. If a new employee within our shop had come after the initial training, they had to either learn from us or by hands on.
As time went on, we as technicians had to do the work of a field engineer, in many cases we had to figure out how to make the equipment work that had either been installed by a contractor or sent to them or us to be installed. We eventually took on the task of designing many of the systems so that we could have them fit our “real world” applications, but then we found it was nearly impossible to keep up on the prints and documentation. It was like we were again moving backwards towards the point where the now aging technicians had most of the knowledge in their heads and not on paper. This information should have been recorded and even stored in digital form by now.
More advanced RTU’s came on line to fill in the slots. These were smaller, more powerful and less costly to install. Eventually all copper telephone lines and even most of the direct wiring went away and was replaced by fiber optic cables or wireless. Another area the technician was expected to become proficient in.
Now we find ourselves on the verge of 2009. The technician has become a Technologist. A person, that fits somewhere in between the Engineer and an Electrical Technician, except without the training or certification.
Our tool cases, while containing some tools, are rarely used. We carry one or maybe even two laptop computers to do most of our troubleshooting and our life is radically different than even 15 years ago. While we do still receive some training on the various types of equipment that we work with, we are often overwhelmed by the speed of the changes and the changes that the speed brings on.
We are an aging workforce that needs to look to the younger generations for many of the technicians that will be required and yet it’s difficult to identify just what attributes these new technicians will need.
We are at a time when global warming and economic strife is quickly changing the way the world thinks about energy. We are on the verge of new forms of energy, many that have been around for decades and have been just too expensive to implement or the technology wasn’t ready.
We are seeing a time when our energy production is shifting from oil and coal based sources to solar photovoltaic, CSP concentrated solar panels, algae plants, bio-mass, bio-fuels, hydrogen fuels cells and this is just to name a few. The day is coming when power will be produced by many, many sources and from de-centralized locations.
We still operate based on an older grid system, but even that has to evolve to support a “Smart Grid” type of system.
The “Smart Grid” system will have to be more interactive and intuitive. Computers and devices will need to make up for the inherent inefficiencies that humans have. The “Smart Grid” will have to learn to act and react based on the amount and types of loads that are placed on it. It will have to be capable of not only supplying power, but also receiving it from various sources.
Power from alternative sources such as wind and solar are generated when the load is at a minimum and can cause fluctuations in the grid that require generators to constantly run to supply the system with firm power. This won't help much to offset the use of fuel or cost.
Storage technologies are advancing, but still require a large investment and commitment to finding more efficient and "greener" ways to produce them. The use of more electric vehicles and connections to their batteries offer some hope for storage in the future.
In addition, devices within homes and businesses will need to evolve and many already are. They will be required to turn loads on and off within homes and businesses, as well as keeping track of usage and be able to trend these changes to report them to their human operators. These tools will be an integral part of allowing us to know how much we pay or get paid for using or supplying power.
Many of these changes, even though we have the technology to implement them, we have only just begun to create an environment within our government and regulatory system that will allow them to be implemented. Granted it is a complex and often overwhelming task to undertake and still predict the outcome of each and every change, but a task that must be done to allow the advances this world needs to take place.
Global warming isn’t just a warning anymore. It’s happening in our lifetimes and our kids will surely pay the price.
So how does all this fit in with the technologist?
The technologist is the person that will be required to take all the ideas that can be engineered and to implement them in a way that can be utilized. Not only do we need to invest in bringing up an entire generation of people who can actually implement these ideas and not just use the end results, we will also need to bridge the existing gap by providing training to the vast number of people who are already the implementers of ideas, the technicians in the midpoint and end years of their careers.
It’s the existing technicians and graduates that need to become the technologists who can create the bridge from what has been built and implemented, to what now has to be built and implemented. Only then can we continue in a direction that will help us to provide power and sustain life on earth, in a world that will require more and more power each and everyday passing day.
It is these mid-career technicians/technologists that will need to pass on the baton to the newer generation of technologists. The average college student entering the utility field would require approximately 12 years of on the job training to realize the level of training a seasoned journeyman technician has. There will always be consumers and users and with them there will be a constant need for those that can implement. That person will be the technologists of the future.
Once again the definition of a Technologist:
"Electrical Technologists are people that apply electrical theory on the job. Their knowledge and skills lay between that of electrical engineers and general electrical trade’s persons. They train in three year diploma programs at colleges or universities. Specializations within the field include instrumentation, power, telecommunications, programming and electronic controls. Electrical Technologists are employed by utilities, engineering drafting/design companies, offshore refineries, and construction."
Jim Hall
12-23-2008
