UK receives $1.5M award for "Training the Next Generation of Industrial Energy Efficiency Experts"

From Dr. Holloway's letter to the PEIK Advisory Board and Core Group announcing the award:

I am very pleased to announce that we received notice today from the US Department of Energy that UK Power and Energy Institute of Kentucky (PEIK) has been awarded a grant for our proposal "Developing the Energy Assessment Engineering Workforce via Student Education and Industrial Assessment Experiences." A press release from the US Dept of Energy is at the Energy.gov web site. The proposal will establish a cross-disciplinary program to educate graduate and undergraduate engineers in energy assessments and energy efficiency improvements for industrial processes and industrial/commercial facilities. This includes not only classroom experiences, but also in-plant assessment experiences of the students.

The grant will be for $1.5 million over five years. The leaders of the grant are Larry Holloway (Electrical and Computer Engr.) and Don Colliver (Biosystems and Ag. Engr.), with Co-PI's of Dusan Sekulic (Mech.Engr.) and Tom Henninger (Mech. Engr.).

An important part of the grant is the partnership with several centers at UK, including the Institute for Research for Technology Development (IR4TD), the Institute for Sustainable Manufacturing (ISM), the Center for Applied Energy Research (CAER), and the Center for Aluminum Technology (CAT). These organizations will serve as technical resources and as important bridges between the educational program of the grant and the industries that will be served.

As the students do their industrial assessment experiences, they will be helping industry by providing data and recommendations for improvements to the companies visited. EKPC and KAEC assisted with letters of support to help us identify customers that would benefit from these student assessment visits, but I hope that all the members of the PEIK advisory board will help us in connecting with potential assessment companies.

We are excited about this award, and I look forward to sharing more information about it as we move towards implementation.