ENGINEERING

A Critical Spark

How electrical engineers bring their clients’ vision to life

By Danny Kreilkamp

Why do transformers hum? …because they don’t know the words to the song.

This was Jacob Pomeranz’, a senior engineer with Electric Power Systems (EPS), best effort at an electrical engineering joke.

While they might not provide much in the way of comedic relief, it’s probably because engineers like Pomeranz are busy taking care of just about everything else.

From power generation to microchip design, to telecommunications and industrial lighting, electrical engineers keep the energy flowing for Alaska and its electro-dependent residents.

“Once you get to the client’s idea or end goal, then you start from the beginning and ask them the basic questions of power consumption: what type of equipment are they going to be operating, what type of fuels do they have access to, can they run natural gas, do they have access to hydro— really understanding the basis of where they’re located and what they need.”

Jacob Pomeranz, Senior Engineer, EPS

“There’s quite a range of work,” says Pomeranz. “You can take so many paths as an electrical engineer. I focus on power generation, but even in the power industry there are people that design transmission lines, distribution lines, or substations.

“And then you go over to the telecommunications side—and that same electrical engineer can focus on communications such as fiber network design, communication based protective relaying, or cyber security design.”

“We have to be a jack of all trades,” echoes RSA Engineering’s Associate Principal Jeremy Maxie, who serves as the Illuminating Engineering Society’s district chair for Western Canada and the Pacific Northwest. “We kind of do everything and then lean on each other where you need that specialized help.”

Although the processes underlying these projects share more similarities than differences, there are some distinctions between bringing a new power plant onboard or outfitting an industrial warehouse with its lighting needs.

Power Generation

“A lot more happens than you might think,” Pomeranz says on how EPS brings its clients’ power generation projects to life. “People call with an idea that they need a power plant built, but often they don’t really have an understanding of what it’s going to take to go from that idea to an end product.”

What it really comes down to, Pomeranz says, is asking the right questions.

“Once you get to the client’s idea or end goal, then you start from the beginning and ask them the basic questions of power consumption: what type of equipment are they going to be operating, what type of fuels do they have access to, can they run natural gas, do they have access to hydro— really understanding the basis of where they’re located and what they need.”

He continues: “After that initial conversation, we start with a highlevel design to make sure they have the same understanding that we do, and then we go through high-level drawings with them—what we call a basis of design.”

That basis of design is a collaborative medium of written communication that ensures the client and the firm are clear on expectations and they can comfortably communicate what’s trying to be achieved, as well as the assumptions that the project is built on.

But Pomeranz says power generation projects go beyond design and construction aspects. “You have to be able to understand the cost basis, the project management, the client relations, local community needs, as well as direct the technical team to start designing it,” he notes.

Where EPS differs from a lot of traditional firms is its ability to oversee every aspect of the process, from design to construction.

“What’s unique about us is that we can come in, give you a turnkey project, and hand you the keys at the end of the day, where a lot of other engineering firms focus solely on the design.”

One of EPS specialties is providing power solutions to rural Alaska.

And while approaching these projects from a high-level design perspective doesn’t change too much, Pomeranz says there are some other challenges to consider.

“The key to rural power plant design is reliability, maintainability, cost reduction, and remote support. The project does not end once the system is installed because things break or wear out over time and Alaskans need someone to support them while they figure out the problem. The rural communities in the state need subject matter experts they can call for support and that support needs to be local to Alaska— Alaska’s remoteness and difficult climate are best understood by Alaskans.”

And with alternative energy systems being integrated into traditional microgrid fossil fuel plants, Pomeranz says unique designs and automation are required to maximize the use of alternative energy.

“You have a lot of cross-trained electrical engineers that understand mechanical as well when you're dealing with power plants—and especially in rural Alaska—because you don't always have a mechanical engineer or vice versa with you

“It’s funny because of all the things we do in engineering, lighting is the most Dr. Jekyll/ Mr. Hyde. There’s this very quantitative engineering aspect to it that says you have to have so many footcandles, reduce glare, et cetera… But the other side of it, this completely subjective aesthetic side, says that you can hit all of those metrics but still run the risk of the client not approving.”

Jeremy Maxie, Associate Principal RSA Engineering when you’re going out in the field,” says Pomeranz.

But being well-versed and multidisciplined isn’t unique to those concerned with power generation.

Lighting and Telecom

Lighting and telecom are two other major sectors of Alaska’s electrical economy. And RSA’s Maxie is one of a few—if not the only—people in the state to have credentials as being both Lighting Certified by the NCQLP and a Registered Communications Distribution Designer through the BICSI.

“It’s funny because, of all the things we do in engineering, lighting is the most Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde,” says Maxie.

“There’s this very quantitative engineering aspect to it that says you have to have so many foot-candles, reduce glare, et cetera… But the other side of it, this completely subjective aesthetic side, says that you can hit all of those metrics but still run the risk of the client not approving.”

Due to its size relative to the rest of the United States, the Last Frontier requires electrical engineers to wear a few different hats.

“Alaska’s a little unique—we don’t have dedicated lighting designers here,” he says. “There’s this art to lighting that’s very challenging to engineers because we’re not typically artistic,” he laughs.

To address this, Maxie and other Alaskan lighting engineers typically acquire their skills through a few different methods.

“It’s threefold—one is the IES.”

The IES is the Illuminating Engineering Society: the industry standard for lighting professionals.

“They put out the handbook, the guides containing metrics—all the quantification,” he says. “But it’s also this huge community of lighting designers, engineers, sales reps, distributors, and all the people involved in the lighting world,” says Maxie, noting that it’s the oldest professional society in the United States.

“The IES is huge for anyone doing lighting design. There’s a wealth of information and ideas.”

The second way he’s gained lighting acumen, Maxie says, is through Alaska manufacturers and their representatives themselves.

“We get a lot of them that come in and they do lunchtime presentations in the office. And that’s great for getting hands and eyes on fixtures and ideas: seeing it, asking questions, and being able to visualize things.”

Third, is purely work experience and “trying things and seeing how they come out,” says Maxie, who is also quick to praise RSA Principal Channing Lilo’s lighting expertise.

With that, executing lighting projects traditionally goes one of two routes: the traditional design-bid-build model, or the design-bid model, where the project owner starts directly with the contractor, bypassing the bidding process entirely.

Common to both pathways (and not dissimilar to most engineering projects), it begins with questions concerning the client’s specific goals and communicating a reasonable solution.

Though due to the visual nature of lighting projects, Maxie says it’s often a much more iterative process compared to power generation or telecom.

“We try to find that balance: we’re there to offer a service, our expertise, and our experience, but also respecting the fact that it’s their facility and they know what they want to see out of it.”

Maxie says one of the engineer’s most important aspects of a lighting project is validating what’s available for power—including the compliancy of a potential site’s existing wiring.

“The wiring might be thirty years old and we’ve had ten code cycles since then, a lot of things may have changed in terms of what’s allowed in the electric code,” he says. “So when we go rewiring a building or replacing the lighting, in some cases you gotta bring it up to code—and that can be a huge issue if you don’t think about that ahead of time.”

Telecom projects are usually a little more straight forward.

“You don’t have nearly as much iterative back and forth because a lot of it is pretty black and white,” he says. “There’s standards for telecom— BICSI—they’ve got a whole manual that’s about 1,000 pages long and that’s the telecom standard.”

He continues: “There’s not a lot of strict code, the standard electrical code like conduit and things like that apply, but for a lot of the low voltage world, you don’t even have to permit because the city a lot of the times doesn’t require an electrical permit if there’s no line voltage involved in the project.”

One interesting development Maxie touched on was the emergence of POE, or power over ethernet, which would effectively combine lighting and telecom.

“There’s been this push for a while now, but the idea is that instead of running that line voltage and running that signal, you would run all of the light power over ethernet [cable] which goes back to a standard network switch,” he explains.

Maxie feels it’s an interesting development but doesn’t think it will be taking over the world any time soon.

“The biggest issue I see with it is that we take all of the power that we distributed out into the building and into the spaces above the ceiling, and now we go and move all that power into a telecom room and power a bunch of switches that then go out and power all of the lights—so you’re shifting where all of that load ends up and then you have to run a bunch of telecom cabling whereas before you were running line voltage.

“Your infrastructure needs for the telecom system and rooms increase dramatically, but you still have significant cabling to the field and power limitations on the fixtures themselves.”

Education

But before an electrical engineer can even offer their seal (or stamp) of approval on any of these projects, they’re looking at a hefty combination of books and on-the-job learning.

The shortest amount of time it takes to become a certified electrical engineer?

Eight years, according to Pomeranz.

“You go to an accredited University, and you typically spend four and a half or five years just due to the workload that is required,” he says.

“The first thing they teach you in school is how to think critically; how to work through a difficult problem that

you may not immediately know the answer to given what’s in front of you… which is exactly what you get when someone from a community calls and says, ‘I need a power plant.’”

The required course load for a bachelor’s in electrical engineering is, understandably, mathematics heavy—with topics focused on electric machinery, electromagnetic theory, and circuit design, to name a few.

Following completion of the degree, graduates can elect to take a sevenhour Fundamentals of Engineering test, also known as the Engineer in Training (EIT) exam, which is generally the first step to becoming a professional licensed engineer (PE).

Prior to applying for the PE test (another grueling, seven-hour exam), EITs must spend four years under the supervision of a professional engineer, gaining the necessary skills and working on projects with increasing responsibility.

On the power generation side, early projects for EITs typically include basic design and layout training in AutoCAD.

“Most of the time, you’re getting familiar with older projects and working off of that to figure out how that applies to the current project you’re working on,” says Pomeranz. “You’d start working on a design or portion of a larger design that’s very basic, putting together drawing numbers and lay it out such that someone that’s going to build it can understand the flow: is it a schematic, is it a wiring diagram, is it a physical layout drawing?”

For lighting, Maxie says one of the first things RSA has their EITs doing is light calculations based on IES metrics.

“The light fixtures all have a calculation file which is essentially a bunch of distributed values for light from the fixture. So you model this to say, ‘Hey, if I put this fixture in, here is where the blobs of light are going to go and here’s what it calculates out as’—it’s something that’s pretty fundamental on a lot of projects.”

Pomeranz, whose own fourteenyear career has seen him work his way up from an EIT to part owner of EPS, explains, “There’s a lot of different things that you don’t necessarily learn in school but that you actually learn starting out as an engineer.” www.akbizmag.com

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