BY John Toon
Who'll keep the lights on?
As utility company executives make plans to meet the growing electricity needs of the Southeast, they're also watching their most experienced personnel approach retirement age. Finding enough skilled personnel to operate complex power-generation facilities poses one of the most critical challenges facing the industry today.
Collaboration between Baltimore-based GSE Systems and Georgia Tech offers one solution: a new way of learning that combines traditional classroom training with hands-on experience using advanced computer simulations of complex industrial facilities. Simulations have long been used to train pilots but are relatively new to other types of industrial training.
"People learn by seeing, experiencing and actually doing something," explained Eric Johnson, senior operations training specialist for GSE Systems. "We can reinforce what students have learned in class by allowing them to interact with a simulation of a facility. The simulation allows them to gain experience without actually having to be in a real plant, and that helps new employees become productive faster."
To provide that innovative learning environment, GSE has built a multimillion-dollar simulation and education center at Georgia Tech's Global Learning Center in Technology Square. The company officially opened the facility — the first of its kind in the United States — with a ceremony Sept. 13.
The center includes more than a dozen LCD panels driven by a powerful computer to simulate the many key systems operated from the control room of an electric generating plant. Student operators can adjust controls and immediately see the effects of their actions not only on the system they are controlling but also on the rest of the plant. Realistic warnings indicate potentially dangerous conditions to which the students must respond. Three-dimensional models show the systems and exact components being controlled.
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