Ever
since initiatives for Power saving, Virtual Power Plant and Smart Grid gained
momentum from 2007-08, growth in career opportunities also grew substantially
in Energy and Utilities industry for Engineering, Networking and Information
Technology professionals. This in line with efforts to boost alternate energy
sources increased the volume of operations in this industry with
non-traditional activities.
Cost of
having a Smart Grid is projected to be $3 / month / customer to a utility
provider. This can be part of Operational expenditure (CAPEX) for business with
flexibility in accounting. It is not much when compared to the costs saved in
optimal energy consumption. Infrastructure investments are made as capital
expenditures (CAPEX) which is laid for long term and with flexible tax options.
Many states like New Jersey, North Carolina and California welcomed this
new initiative with millions of consumers subscribing to this.
For those
who are new to this, let us take a quick look at this opportunity.
· This involves installing smart meters / devices at each consumer's
home / business, transmitting signals through wireless enabled systems (like
Zigbee) to a central database. Such data signals are then cleaned, sorted and
arranged to be made available through a web or mobile based program (JAVA,
Android/iOS etc.) to each customer who would be enabled to create individual
accounts just like the way a bank does for their customers.
· Each consumer would be able to remotely operate such utility
services / devices such as power at their home / business. How cool it would be
turn on your air conditioner at home from your mobile while you are still at
work and couple hours before you reach home on a hot summer day, Right? Yes,
this is no longer a fantasy. This is real with Smart Grid and Smart Meters
today.
So, here
are the opportunities for different professionals:
· Manufacturing, Engineering, Installing and Testing the devices and
equipment - this would be the opportunities for those from mechanical and
electrical engineering.
· Laying out wireless networks and devices with all networking
standards and security - this would go to the networking and information
security professionals
· Cleaning the signal data, sorting it, arranging and pushing to web
/ mobile applications - Database administrators or Data Warehousing
professionals would do this job.
· Application design, development and testing - This would give
great opportunities for Engineers from Computer Science and Computer
Engineering. Mobile developers also would have great opportunity in this part
of the integration.
Oracle
is getting big in to this with Java ME. Microsoft
also is big in this space with .NET Micro frame work. A more fundamental
reason is that embedded hardware has become powerful to the point of running
Java and .NET. Feel free to use your imagination to project the opportunities
that are going to be generated!
Above
depicts only the information management part of it. Lot of functional expertise
and subject matter experts also would be required to input several ideas to
make this happen.
With the
growing trends and internet of things, Applications are cloud enabled now. We
also hear about BigData. This is an advent of another huge opportunity
wave.
If we
look closer on the above discussed opportunities, many of these jobs can be
performed by fresh Graduate Students with proper training and mentoring. This
involves several cutting edge technologies which they have been dreaming to get
in to or would have heard recommendations from their Professors.
Having executed few successful projects in Smart Grid Demand Response and trained several Graduate Students, it is
our thinking that opportunities are growing day by day in Energy and Utilities
which may be worth pursuing. This wave of things has just begun in North
American and some parts of Far East Asia. Global opportunity calls of thousands
of qualified talents in the years to come when we see our whole planet deploys
this!
