Teaching smart grids: Yet another challenge and opportunity for transforming power systems curriculum

This paper concerns the challenge of teaching future energy systems using concepts familiar to engineering students. It is stressed that unless operating and design problems are formulated in a way understandable to those who do not specialize in electric power systems it becomes very difficult to identify what may be the roadblocks to innovation and better performance of the evolving energy systems. In particular, it becomes difficult to formulate problems underlying effective integration of novel resources and responsive demand by means of information technology (IT) unless these are "translated" into the frameworks understandable to those working with complex systems and to the IT designers.