Renewable energy installations generate large amounts of data. In a typical wind or solar farm, each individual turbine and each solar module has its own communications signal. This data is managed through a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system, which organizes the data so that technicians can analyze the information to inform system operations and maintenance decision making. To put this in perspective, NextEra Energy, the world’s largest renewable energy producer, receives over 20 billion data points from over 4,000 wind and solar installations in a single day! Unfortunately, due to workforce limitations of knowledge and bandwidth for processing this data, the renewable energy industry is challenged to extract the value from this data stream, and to put the information to use in optimizing the management of wind and solar installations. Join presenters from NextEra Energy and the CREATE Energy Center as they discuss a new educational initiative funded by the National Science Foundation to address this important workforce need. Madison Area Technical College will also share information on the creation of their virtual workshops for high school and community college faculty and the network of 900+ teachers across all 50 states.

The presentation will be led by Maureen Wilt, Senior Education Program Manager for NextEra Energy and Florida Power & Light, and Dr. Kenneth Walz, Director of the Center for Renewable Energy Advanced Technological Education at Madison Area Technical College.