Microgrid Electrical Engineer

ABOUT US:

The University of St Thomas School of Engineering:

The University of St Thomas School of Engineering (SOE) is a primarily undergraduate teaching institution focusing on engineering education within the context of a liberal arts framework. As part of the largest private university in Minnesota, the School of Engineering comprises nearly 15% of the campus population. The UST School of Engineering offers undergraduate and masters level programs in the areas of Electrical Engineering, Data Science, Software Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Civil engineering, and Manufacturing Engineering.

The Center for Microgrid Research:

The Center for Microgrid Research is in the midst of an exciting growth phase with more than $25 Million grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of Defense (DOD), and Minnesota Department of Commerce. In the next year, it is anticipated that the CMR team will grow to more than 10 full-time staff and 15 student researchers. Through the awards, the Center’s infrastructure is expanding in capability and size. The microgrid’s on-site generation capacity is increasing to more than 1.5 MW to feed power to 5 buildings on campus, covering more than 400,000 sq. ft. of space. The expanded microgrid will be made up of 2 smaller microgrids and have 4 points of connection with the local utility resulting in a unique networked-microgrids layout. The research and development infrastructure is growing to include state-of-the-art Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testbeds for controller-HIL, power-HIL, and power-system-HIL. Research findings developed and prototyped on the HIL testbeds will be immediately applied to the real-world microgrid for real-world case studies and experiments. Moreover, the CMR’s industry partnership network is rapidly broadening. As an example, the CMR is a founding member of the Minnesota Cleantech Consortium which includes 3M, Cummins, Xcel Energy, Connexus, Great Plains Institute, and many others.