Carleton partnered with Hydro Ottawa to open a new lab in the university’s Canal Building, Nov. 28.
Carleton president Roseann Runte and Rafik Goubran, dean of Carleton's Faculty of Engineering and Design, attended the opening of the Hydro Ottawa Laboratory for Smart Grid Technologies, along with members of Hydro Ottawa.
“I’m thrilled that this partnership is providing hands-on education for future industry leaders,” Goubran told attendees.
The lab will be used to research new ways to improve Ottawa's electricity grid, according to Carl Kropp, an electronics professor at Carleton.
“There are ways of controlling the electricity system to make it much smarter than it is now, and this lab is to some degree about creation of a smart grid, to give the students some idea what the so-called smart grid is, and what it might be expected to do,” he said.
Norm Fraser, Hydro Ottawa’s chief operating officer, said although the lab just opened, it already presents opportunities.
“We're going to be able to leverage some of the smarts that the kids are going to bring to the school,” he said.
Carleton students could benefit from Hydro Ottawa as well, he said.
“We're going to ask them to help us with projects, [and] we're going to bring in our own guest speakers,” he said.
Kropp said the partnership between Carleton and Hydro Ottawa, the first of its kind, is vital in bringing together the two fields.
“There ought to be much, much more of this where the industrial world comes into the university, and the university takes the academic world into the industry,” he said.
The partnership will help get students excited about electrical engineering, Fraser said.
“We need engineers, especially electrical engineers in our business. We need them to be thinking in modern terms. We need them to be encouraged and excited by the prospects of this business,” he said. “It's great to have this opportunity to work closely to Carleton.”