POWER June 2014 - 56

WORKFORCE
1. The National Energy Center of Excellence. This four-story building-built on a
hillside and shown here from the top of the hill-includes labs, classrooms, and administrative
offices for Bismarck State College's energy programs. Source: POWER/Aaron Larson
3. Lab training modules provide
hands-on experiences. The electrical
control and hydraulic instrumentation modules
shown here are just a sample of the mockups
used at BSC. Source: POWER/Aaron Larson
Physical pumps, motors, and valves with
technology program in the country, which the
school began offering in 1976. The program
expanded to include process plant technology
in 1981.
The school has continued to expand its offerings,
including providing online courses
beginning in 2000, nuclear training in 2004,
and maintenance offerings in 2007, which
was also the year that the Department of Energy
(DOE) designated BSC as the " National
Power Plant Operations Technology and Education
Center. " In 2008, the school began offering
a bachelor's degree program in energy
management, and the $21 million National
Energy Center of Excellence (NECE)-a
106,200-square-foot, state-of-the-art building
that currently houses the college's energy
programs and some administrative offices-
went into service (Figure 1).
BSC boasts that it has trained thousands
of energy employees in all U.S. states. In
fact, there was at least one student from every
state and Canada among the 1,359 creditseeking
energy program students in 2013. A
handful of international learners were part of
the enrollment as well.
2. Control room simulator. The simulator
is an excellent tool for training students
on plant operation. It allows instructors to enter
system anomalies, which require students
to identify and respond to alarms and unusual
plant conditions. Source: POWER/Aaron Larson
Modern Facilities
More than two-thirds of the money for BSC's
NECE came by way of donations from businesses
and individuals, combined with federal,
state, and local funding, the largest
single portion of which was $5 million from
the DOE. In addition to funding the facility,
the money has been used on some high-tech
training equipment.
The labs at BSC include a control room
simulator (Figure 2), which was paid for by
Great River Energy (GRE) in exchange for
use of the simulator to train and qualify its
operators. The distributed control system for
the simulator utilizes software identical to that
used at GRE's Coal Creek Station, a coal-fired
power plant with twin 600-MW units. In addition
to two on-campus simulators, BSC also
has two online simulators that allow student
access from anywhere in the country.
Other state-of-the-art labs include a truckdriving
simulator that is used to prepare students
to obtain their commercial driver's
license, which is required for line workers.
The simulator provides a realistic semi-truck
driving experience, requiring students to shift
gears, maneuver around obstacles, and use mirrors
in the same way they would when driving
a real truck. The seat and steering wheel are
mounted on a moving, vibrating platform that
enhances the experience, while large screens
display the environment being navigated. The
school also owns a semi-truck and trailer for
actual on-road training.
An operating thermal power plant with
a natural gas-fired, water-tube boiler is another
hands-on training tool for students at
the college. Complete with a distributed
control system, the boiler produces steam
to operate a single-stage turbine and small
generator. The plant utilizes all of the conventional
equipment-deaerator, condenser,
feed pumps, and the like-typically included
in a utility-scale plant.
56
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cutaway sections for easy viewing of internal
components are another useful learning
tool. In addition to these, BSC has modern
training stations for process control systems,
mechanical drive systems, electrical control
modules, and hydraulic instrumentation
components (Figure 3).
They Gotta Wear Shades
The future's so bright for most of the power
program students that they should probably
be wearing welding helmets to cut the
glare. Graduates of accredited educational
programs catering to the power industry
are finding high demand for their services.
BSC reports that its placement rate has been
in the high 90s for more than a decade and
that seems unlikely to change anytime soon,
based on the EPCE statistics.
The biggest challenge is finding candidates
who are interested in working in a plant
or industrial setting. Although the money is
generally agreed to be good, many young
people feel the jobs are dirty and monotonous.
While impressive schools with shiny
new toys may coax students in the doors,
utilities will need to utilize new techniques to
keep new employees engaged and interested.
For example, as a December 2013 report
( " Power and Utilities Changing Workforce " )
by PricewaterhouseCoopers noted: " Even
state-of-the-art utilities, however, still need to
be able to speak the language of today's technology
driven generation. And while some
organizations have been experimenting with
new digital technologies and e-learning approaches
to attract and retain younger people,
most still lack appropriate training skills and
procedures. Training manuals in the form
of three-inch ring binders and a classroombased,
instructor-led approach simply may not
be attractive to a digital generation that wants
to learn largely online and at its own pace. " ■
-Aaron Larson is a POWER associate
editor (@AaronL_Power,
@POWERmagazine).
POWER | June 2014

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POWER June 2014

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