News & Events

What's the big deal about power?

Simple. Our future.

With massive transmission towers, mul-tiple substations and millions of miles of power lines, the nation's electrical power grid provides essential electric power to all of us. POWER Engineers, Inc. is an international firm based in Meridian, Idaho, that specializes in energy projects and efforts to improve the country's aging power generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure. They see the University's Electrical and Computer Engineering Department as a great partner in working for a bright future and training the next generation of power systems engineers.

"The University of Idaho is one of our top schools in terms of employee recruitment," said Bill Eisinger, POWER Engineers transmission and distribution vice president and University of Idaho alumnus. "This donation allows us to continue a strong relationship with the University of Idaho, encourage advancement of future engineers, and provide a state-of-the-art laboratory that can be found at only a handful of universities in the U.S."

The Center for Power Engineering gives a critical surge of support to the power systems engineering education program at Idaho. Students will learn and gain experience on the same equipment industry leaders are using.

A centerpiece addition is a Real Time Digital Simulator that will allow students to react to situations like lightning strikes, terrorist attacks, natural disasters and other threats to the power grid.

The University of Idaho will be one of only nine universities in the United States that has a Real Time Digital Simulator, and the only university in the Northwest with this capability.

In addition, the center will allow faculty to conduct world-class research to advance the field of power engineering technology.

The donation "will bring some of the best technology in the industry into our labs and helps the department continue to provide one of the largest and most extensive power engineering programs, in terms of courses offered, in the United States," said Brian Johnson, power engineering professor and chair of electrical engineering. "This provides a significant advantage for our faculty and students."

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