On a sweltering hot Delhi evening in 2012, Shruti Kumar was heading home early to prepare for her mother’s birthday celebrations. The metro station was an air-conditioned respite. But just as the train pulled out of Barakhamba Road station, darkness enveloped it. It came to an abrupt halt and the faint emergency lights, combined with the oppressive heat, made her panic.
There had been a power failure. Shruti wanted to call home, but there was no signal.
Eventually, she and hundreds of others emerged above ground, only to be greeted by a greater chaos on the streets. The traffic was in disarray due to non-functioning signals. When Shruti finally managed to get home, she discovered that her mother had been stuck in the apartment lift for a good while.
The nationwide power failure of July 30 and 31 was massive. It impacted 600 million people.
When the stakes are high, it requires that the best human resources of the country be deployed in the rapidly evolving field of power generation, transmission and distribution. Efficient management of the national energy system requires an army of highly skilled and knowledgeable personnel that keeps vigil 24x7 to avert a recurrence of what happened in 2012.
And that is exactly where power engineers fit in.
Power engineering is an interdisciplinary course. It offers coverage of relevant mechanical and electrical engineering subjects, and specialised topics on thermal, hydro, nuclear and RE power generation, transmission and distribution.
The department of power engineering of Calcutta’s Jadavpur University offers both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. The courses are designed to help students meet global challenges in supporting a carbon-free economy through affordable, clean, reliable and sustainable power.
“It gives an all-round, interdisciplinary knowledge base,” says Srikanta Paladhi, a 1993 graduate who is currently employed in Toyo Engineering. Particularly in engineering and project management, interjects Nilanjan Chakraborty, who works for IMI Bopp & Reuther, Germany. He is working on the design of turbines and valves for nuclear steam plants.
Usashi Banerjee, who is with Accenture, is developing a technology platform for the ministry of power. “Thanks to the solid technological foundation I gained during my undergraduate studies, I am able to contribute at the highest decision-making bodies in the power sector,” she states.
Graduates with power engineering degrees have established themselves in other industries as well. “The interdisciplinary skills I picked up during my undergraduate days have equipped me to adapt, collaborate across domains and tackle complex, multifaceted challenges in cutting-edge industries,” says Aritra Ghosh, who works as a senior engineer at Lam Research, a reputed company specialising in semiconductor manufacturing in San Francisco, US.
The interdisciplinary aspect of the course offers ample scope for the student to pursue higher studies in niche areas in energy and sustainability. Sreyashi Maitra, a bright 2023 graduate, is currently pursuing her master’s degree at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. She is focussing on developing the next generation of flexible thin-film solar cells.
The fundamental and applied subjects she studied, coupled with her multidisciplinary research during her undergraduate days, have strengthened her portfolio so that she could secure a spot in one of Europe’s finest institutions and also prepared her to tackle complex research challenges at Delft.
With aspirations of becoming a leading scientist and eventually taking on an academic role, she looks up to Abhijit Mukherjee, a professor at CSUN, California, US, and Soumyadip Sett, faculty member at IIT Gandhinagar. Both pursued their PhDs in the US after completing their bachelor’s in power engineering from Jadavpur University.
Unlike the more traditional and self-contained disciplines of mechanical or electrical engineering, power engineering offers a uniquely integrated perspective that connects thermo-fluid sciences with energy and electrical systems.
Power engineering courses in India are typically offered at undergraduate (BTech or BE) and postgraduate (MTech and PhD) levels. Courses in energy engineering are also offered in some institutes featuring comparable curricula. Specialised courses — such as in renewable energy systems and electric vehicle technology — are becoming increasingly popular, although they are essentially subsets of power engineering.