Jan 10, 2020
Twenty eight educators representing 17 U.S. states
took time out of their winter break to participate in the CREATE Supervisory
Controls and Data Acquisition (SCADA) Workshop delivered by Indian River State
College. The workshop featured a day of programming hosted by NextEra
Energy Resources, the world's largest generator of renewable energy.
CREATE faculty met with NextEra power generation engineers and subject matter
experts to learn about SCADA technology. The day included a tour of the Renewable Operations Control Center (ROCC),
which serves as the monitoring and operations center of NextEra Energy
Resource's wind, photovoltaic solar, and battery energy storage fleet.
Participants learned about ROCC Operations processes including plant
Start-Up/Shutdown, Curtailment, Daily Work Management, Troubleshooting and
Outage restoration, and Energy Market Communications. The workshop
participants also contributed to a draft SCADA job task analysis to identify
key knowledge and skills necessary for the energy workforce. A curriculum
scoping activity also laid the groundwork for forthcoming SCADA curriculum
development that will be completed in spring 2020. The group also
received the first glimpse of the new Open Source SCADA platform being
developed by experts from Indian River and NextEra. The Open Source
platform will be distributed in the year ahead for free access by community
colleges participating in the project.