Past, present and future trends in electrical power engineering education

The paper deals with the field of electrical power engineering and its relevance and sustainability in the future. With increasing concerns about global warming and green house gases, the electricity energy generation, conversion and utilisation will play an important part in future growth and development. Electrical Engineering is a well established field of study and power engineering is the oldest sub-discipline of it. Electrical Engineering field has expanded much rapidly over the last few decades with rapid advances in solid state electronics, communication, computer systems and microprocessors, computer control, artificial intelligence etc. It was rather natural to accommodate new developments by removing or rationalizing existing course structures. Due to huge new developments, new degree programs have emerged as specialist disciplines e.g. electronic engineering, computer engineering, communication engineering, control engineering and of course electrical power engineering and even highly specialised sub-discipline of photovoltaic and solar energy. Power engineering education has gone through various stages including earlier golden era of large scale electrification, later an era of automation and computer control and more recently an era of restructuring / deregulation and privatisation and energy conservation. It is expected that the future of power engineering will concentrate on alternative electrical energy sources, power quality issues, smart drive systems, distributed generation and electric vehicles and better forms of storage, use of superconductors and other highly efficient and smart materials.