| Participating in the signing ceremony (from left) are: Integral Energ... Participating in the signing ceremony (from left) are: Integral Energy CEO, Mr Richard Powis; UOW Vice-Chancellor, Professor Gerard Sutton; Integral General Manager of Network Development and Control, Mr Rod Howard; Associate Professor Sarath Perera, Informatics; and Professor Joe Chicharo, Dean of Informatics |
Integral Energy boosts UOW’s power engineering activities
17 Aug 2007 | Bernie Goldie
Integral Energy has invested a further $1 million to improve power quality and reliability to customers by funding power engineering activities at the University of Wollongong.
Integral Energy, which provided the initial funding for establishing Australia’s first power quality centre in 1996, has now invested more than $3 million in the University’s Power Quality and Reliability Centre.
At a special ceremony held yesterday (16 August) Integral Energy Chief Executive Officer, Mr Richard Powis, signed a three-year agreement with the University’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Gerard Sutton.
Over the past 12 years, the Integral Energy Power Quality and Reliability Centre has saved major companies hundreds of thousands of dollars by helping them understand how to operate their businesses within the capabilities of the electricity network.
“Through our support we’re able to partner with a leading university in new ways to supply better services for our customers and improve the quality of supply they receive in their homes and businesses,” Mr Powis said.
Associate Professor Sarath Perera, of the Faculty of Informatics, said the funding came at a critical period when there was a great deal of discussion regarding sustainable power generation, greenhouse gases and global warming.
Professor Perera said this major investment by Integral would make a significant contribution to allow the centre to take positive action to train engineers for the future following a recent study by the centre identifying a looming national shortage of power engineers.
Mr Powis said the study had been taken very seriously by the electricity industry and had resulted in several initiatives such as Integral Energy continuing its support of the centre.
“The study not only identified the looming skills’ shortage of power engineers, but also a severe shortage of academics with specialist knowledge of power systems,” he said.
In addition to training of undergraduates and postgraduates and provision of continuing education courses to practising engineers, a major objective of the Power Quality and Reliability Centre is to work with industry to improve the quality and reliability of the electricity supply to industrial, commercial and domestic users.
The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Gerard Sutton, praised Integral, and particularly the vision of its CEO, Mr Richard Powis, for its ongoing commitment by making such a significant investment.
“This partnership is critical to the future needs of the electricity industry in Australia,” Professor Sutton said.
Professor Sutton said it was also important to glamorise the industry in order to attract engineering students.
“The challenge is to actually sell power engineering as being sexy – that is the truth of it,” the Vice-Chancellor said.
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