A case study on blackout restoration as an educational tool

New exercises are needed to stimulate interest in power engineering, especially providing links to the other areas of electrical engineering such as computers or controls. While de-regulation has revitalized many technical challenges in power system engineering, power faculty members need updated resources to interest students in power engineering as a career. This paper describes a case study developed at Michigan Technological University (MTU). This exercise provides an educational opportunity for electrical engineering students at the sophomore/junior level to expand their knowledge about power systems in general, and more specifically power system blackout restoration. Besides offering explanations of concepts, this case study uses the dynamic environment of HTML to help create links for more detailed and often more visual representations for key concepts. The end goals for the students are (1) to complete open-ended exercises to see how they can immediately apply their newly acquired knowledge, and (2) an introduction to advanced power system subjects.