University of Arkansas Joins Energy Consortium

The University of Arkansas has joined the Foundations for Engineering Education for Distributed Energy Resources, or FEEDER, Consortium. This consortium, which consists of seven universities, two national laboratories, eight utility companies and seven industrial companies, is led by the University of Central Florida.

According to its website, “The overall goal of FEEDER is to accelerate the deployment of distributed power systems technologies through innovative research, cross-institutional highly collaborative education of the current and future workforce, partnering with public and private entities in energy systems and smart grid, and leveraging well-designed and complementary research, development, test, analysis and evaluation.”

The FEEDER program, when fully implemented, will allow students at the seven universities to take courses for credit from any consortium university. Juan Balda, interim head of the department of electrical engineering, explained that memorandums of understanding among the member universities are currently being developed.

“This is a great opportunity for our teaching and research programs in this field, complementing very well the work that we are pursuing through our other existing online engineering programs. This should strengthen our educational program and provide our students with the possibility of expanding their horizons,” said Balda.

To support its participation in this consortium, the University of Arkansas received funding from the Department of Energy through the Grid Engineering for Accelerated Renewable Energy Deployment program. This grant will allow the U of A to collaborate with other FEEDER members to develop a curriculum for education and training of an electric utility workforce knowledgeable in distributed generation and smart grid technologies. 

Faculty involved in this project are Balda, University Professor of electrical engineering, Roy McCann, professor of electrical engineering, and Alan Mantooth, Distinguished Professor of electrical engineering and Twenty-First Century Endowed Chair in Mixed-Signal IC Design and CAD.