HVDC Is Becoming Standard. The Grid Around It Isn’t.
A conversation with GE Vernova CTO Cornelis Plet on 2 GW building blocks, grid-forming controls, multi-vendor interoperability, China, Europe and the engineering bottleneck.
Earlier this year for Redefining Energy, I sat down with Cornelis “Case” Plet, CTO of Grid Systems Integration at GE Vernova, for a wide-ranging discussion about HVDC and what happens as the grid becomes increasingly dominated by power electronics. We talked about the emergence of 2 GW HVDC as a standard building block, multi-terminal and multi-vendor systems, grid-forming inverters, the very different approaches being taken in China, Europe and North America, and why the shortage of experienced power engineers may be a bigger constraint than equipment manufacturing. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of that conversation, cleaned for readability while staying as close as possible to what Case and I actually said.
Michael Barnard [MB]: Welcome back to Redefining Energy. I’m your host, Michael Barnard. Today I’m speaking with Case Plet, the CTO of Grid Systems Integration within GE Vernova’s Electrification business. Case, welcome back to the discussion.
Cornelis Plet [CP]: Thank you. It’s great to be back again, Michael.
[MB]: It’s been a couple of years since we last talked, so people don’t necessarily know who you are and what you’re up to today. You’re an expert on HVDC and electrification, so why don’t you start with the journey that got you to being the CTO at GE Vernova?
[CP]: In some ways, it’s a dream come true for me, for sure. From a fairly early age, I developed an interest in electrical engineering. It’s probably one of the least tangible subjects for me, very abstract. It fascinated me that you can calculate things that you can’t see or touch or smell and do useful stuff with it. That led me to focus on STEM-related topics, physics mostly, and ultimately to choose to study electrical engineering. I studied at Imperial College in London, where I did my undergraduate degree, and, probably as many engineers will have experienced, after three years of studying you think you know everything. So I decided to quit my studies and join Shell, where I was lucky enough to join the first Dutch offshore wind farm project as an intern.
That’s where I got exposed to power engineering. Power engineering is something that really stuck with me because of its scale. I like big things and the logistics involved with them. It often becomes quite political because those projects have a social role in society as well, supplying power to people like you and me. I also realized when I joined that project that I knew nothing. I remember the very first day, when the lead engineer drew out the single-line diagram of the wind farm, and I could barely recognize any of the symbols he was using. That made me think, well, maybe I do need to continue my studies.
After I worked on that project for a year and learned a lot about high voltage, logistics, and all the equipment and technology involved in realizing such an offshore wind farm, I decided to go back to university with renewed focus. I finished my master’s degree and got the opportunity to do a PhD. I stayed on for another three years, focusing on converter control and protection. I had the luxury of choosing my own topic and my own supervisor. Maybe at the time it wasn’t as critical a topic as it is today, but we were focusing on how converters behave in the case of a grid fault.
[MB]: Everybody became an expert on that overnight last year after the Iberian Peninsula thing. It was amazing how many people were all of a sudden PhD-level power engineers.
[CP]: Yeah, AI-powered, which wasn’t around when I was doing my PhD. In fact, we really struggled at the time to get some of the findings published because a lot of reviewers weren’t seeing this as a real problem yet. We didn’t have inverter-dominated grids at the time. But it did set me on a path toward being interested in inverter-based transmission, so HVDC. A gentleman I work closely with today, Colin Davidson from GE, came to Imperial College and gave a lecture on HVDC LCC, line-commutated converter technology. I remember thinking, now that’s cool. That is really the biggest scale of power electronics, probably the highest complexity in terms of control. That is something I’d quite like to do.
So I applied for a job with GE Alstom at the time, but was unlucky and didn’t get it. I decided to move back to the Netherlands, live with my partner there, and get a job at KEMA. At that time in the Netherlands, if you wanted to do something serious with high voltage, the KEMA short-circuit laboratories were the place to go. These are the most powerful short-circuit laboratories in the world, and this is really where cutting-edge technology would be tested and validated. Of course, sometimes it didn’t work out and you would hear a mighty bang, which is always entertaining. But that company got bought by a Norwegian company, DNV, so I went with it.
I moved to the advisory arm, where I did a lot of failure investigations, especially into cables, but also other kinds of what we call primary equipment. That’s where I really got an appreciation for high-voltage engineering and for the quality control necessary to make something that can be hundreds of kilometers long. You can’t have the tiniest thing wrong with it, because the smaller the defect is, the more dangerous it becomes inside the insulation, for example. That makes it a very fascinating component to learn more about. After doing that for a few years, I felt I’d learned enough about cables and wanted to go back to systems.
I got the opportunity to lead a European Union-funded research project called PROMOTioN, which is a bit of a heavy-handed acronym for Progress on Meshed Offshore HVDC Transmission Networks. This was a very large, multi-year research, development, and demonstration project to show that the technologies needed to build multi-terminal meshed HVDC grids, such as HVDC circuit breakers, the control and protection systems needed to do it, and HVDC gas-insulated switchgear, were at a sufficiently high technology-readiness level to build such grids. On top of that, we started working on what was needed from all the non-technical aspects to start creating such grids. One of the things that makes HVDC very interesting is that, by its nature, it is typically applied over very long distances: hundreds, sometimes thousands, of kilometers. That means you’re always crossing borders of some kind, with different people who own the equipment, who have to invest in it and get a return on it, different regulatory models, and different political regimes with different ideals that can change every four years. So that makes HVDC projects kind of like a toy of these large storms that can happen.
[MB]: This is in the developed world and in the developing world, but there’s one country where it’s less of a concern.
[CP]: Yes. If you’re building it within a country, and I think that also goes for the Western world, it is much easier. Then we don’t have this issue with multiple owners and multiple regulatory frameworks.
[MB]: Outside of the United States.
[CP]: I think within the United States it’s fair to say that, within a state, it can be done more easily than if you have to cross states, or especially if you have to cross different ISOs. There’s also that part to it. We digress a little bit there, but that very notion is a challenge to building multi-terminal, multinational HVDC grids.
That was also one of the work packages in the PROMOTioN project: to chart out the issues, the gaps, and the areas where we could get countries to come closer together by, for example, aligning on what we call a benefit and how we measure it, what we call a cost and how we measure it, and then how we can start thinking about sharing it. I don’t want to say that we fixed or solved that problem, but we at least made it quite visible and took a first step toward some of the thought processes that we see today in planning the offshore grid in Europe. It was a super interesting project. I cut my teeth on that project and learned a lot about HVDC technology.
[MB]: What years did that project run?
[CP]: That was five years ago now, and then the five years before that. It started in 2015 and finished in 2020, roughly.
[MB]: Because now we’re starting to do the work for the HVDC mesh grid in the North Sea, right?
[CP]: Yep.
[MB]: So all the work you led there was preparatory for that. And, of course, as you probably remember, I was asked to assist with editing the second edition of Super Grid Super Solution, Eddie O’Connor’s book with Kevin O’Sullivan, on exactly that: a meshed HVDC overlay grid for Europe.
[CP]: I think we’re still a long way from that holy grail of a meshed, truly multinational overlay grid. But we can see the small building steps and building blocks appearing. The Germans are, in one way, taking a lead in creating the first true multi-terminal hubs with HVDC circuit breakers, but they’re still looking at it from a single-vendor perspective. So they’re tackling the HVDC circuit-breaker problem before tackling the multi-vendor problem. In the UK, there are some developments toward tackling the multi-vendor problem first, but leaving the DC circuit breaker probably for later. And then we see some actual multi-terminal projects happening. The first one was taken into operation, I think, in 2024 or 2025: the Caithness-Shetland-Moray link-up in Scotland.
We see multiple initiatives appearing now that use multi-terminal HVDC technology, but all with slightly different technology implementations. I think what we’ll first see is some of those projects being built and operational experience being gained. Based on that operational experience, we’ll find out what an HVDC grid code could look like, for example. Then you’ll see gradual standardization come in that might eventually lead to such a pan-European overlay supergrid in HVDC.
[MB]: I’m certainly hoping that the proposal for an EU grid architect comes through.
[CP]: Yes.
[MB]: Because right now it is the ENTSO-E club, and I’ve actually had personal experience of how that starts to evolve because of the work I did with TenneT Netherlands last year, assisting them with their 2050 decarbonized Netherlands target scenario. I was making it more pragmatic than it was so they could have a target grid. But that was all within the Netherlands. The way their scenarios had evolved involved dealing with a bunch of very parochial distribution system operators, industrial stakeholders, and other stakeholders who were basically saying, ‘Yeah, we’re just going to stay the way we are.’ Europe needs a grid architect, and there’s a proposal to get one in place. ENTSO-E formally doesn’t like it, but I—
[CP]: Can’t say too much about that.
[MB]: No, I’m not asking for an opinion from your position, but I do—
[CP]: —see that if you don’t have a multilateral grid-planning platform, then it will be very difficult to achieve true multilateral grid planning. That’s basically what we’re seeing in the US. We are a bit better at it in Europe, but there are definitely still steps to be made to make that a truly European grid plan that then also gets executed as such.
[MB]: For all the challenges that emerge from that organization, at least it exists and was doing the work.
[CP]: Exactly.
[MB]: That doesn’t exist in the United States.
[CP]: No, I still don’t think there’s a common understanding in the United States of how the benefits of a grid should be measured and quantified, for example, let alone an inter-regional grid-planning platform.
[MB]: And being in Canada, it’s like we have some movement in that direction, but it’s some movement in that direction. That’s about all I can say about it so far. It’s far from baked, and it’s kind of painful.
[CP]: But from an HVDC grid-planning perspective, I do see change in the United States within one state or one ISO realm. Recently in Ontario, an HVDC line was greenlighted, really drawing on the ability of HVDC to bring quite large amounts of power into city centers with minimal space use. Similarly, Dominion recently approved a couple of HVDC links to essentially meet their data-center demand. And, of course, recently we saw HVDC being included in the grid plans in CAISO. I think that was last year, or perhaps two years ago already. That means HVDC is finally beginning to become an accepted tool in the regular grid planner’s toolbox rather than something proposed by developers who then struggle to get through all the regulatory hoops to get it built.
[MB]: And to be clear, that’s a developed-world perspective. In Pakistan, they have the North-South HVDC that was put in with Chinese help. There’s a fair amount of HVDC in India. A lot of HVDC links are emerging in ASEAN, Singapore, and Malaysia so they can share their renewable resources.
[CP]: The Asian part of the world will see very strong growth in HVDC and, I suspect, will also drive a lot of the technology development in the near future.
[MB]: Last time we spoke, one of the things we talked about was that China now has its own entire technology stack. They leveraged a lot, but the thing about them is that they’re doing the biggest projects and the most projects in the world, so they’re learning all the lessons. Just as you spent your year learning power electronics on a wind farm, their engineers have deep experience.
[CP]: There’s no better school than actually doing something and learning from the mistakes that you make to get better the next time around.
[MB]: Hopefully, the mistakes other people make that you get to be part of fixing. Let’s pivot a bit. Tell me about Grid Systems Integration and GE Vernova overall, because it was only relatively recently that it was just GE. How do you refer to it internally: the divorce, the separation?
[CP]: I don’t really know. We don’t talk much about it, to be honest. Essentially what happened is that GE, which traces its roots back to Thomas Edison and being the original DC advocate, got into financial trouble and was restructured a few years ago into three entirely separate companies. As far as I understand it, pretty much the only things they have in common are that they’re still called GE something and we’re still using the original GE logo. So we have GE HealthCare, GE Aerospace, and then GE Vernova, which is the part I’m in. Vernova stands for ‘ver,’ something with green, and ‘nova,’ new energies.
GE Vernova itself is split into three major parts. We have the Power branch, where we build nuclear power plants, gas power plants, and hydro. We have Wind, where we produce the wind turbines. And then we have the Electrification business, which is the part I’m in now. Within Electrification, we have several different businesses. We produce the high-voltage primary equipment, the transformers, the switchgear, those things. We have a business focusing on grid automation: all the digital systems needed to make the grid work, from protection to system control, and the software needed to analyze what is happening in the grid. We have Power Conversion, where we make medium-voltage, megawatt-sized power-electronic drives, whether for vessels, connecting batteries to the grid, or supplying power to data centers. And then we have Grid Systems Integration, which is the part I’m part of.
Within GE, that is where we do HVDC, FACTS, and AC substations, as well as the services needed to keep those things running. What we really are is almost like an EPC arm. We are an engineered-equipment package vendor. We basically buy equipment from our other colleagues—the transformers, switchgear, and substation automation—and engineer and integrate it all into a solution that we can sell to our customers: developers, utilities, industry, whoever needs a transmission solution.
Within our scope, we don’t only buy equipment from our colleagues. There are some things our colleagues don’t make, like the HVDC power-electronic valves or the FACTS power-electronic valves; the control and protection platforms, consisting of the hardware, the computers on which the algorithms run, and the control and protection algorithms themselves; as well as converter transformers. The reason converter transformers are part of our scope is that we have the actual factory for the special type of transformers needed for HVDC converter stations within Grid Systems Integration. That means we can control the factory slots and capacity, the quality, and the design rules needed to make sure we can optimize the transformer design within the HVDC system design and have full control over it.
That, in a nutshell, explains Grid Systems Integration. We deliver HVDC, FACTS, and AC-substation solutions, and we make the three core products that go into those solutions: the power electronics, the control and protection, and the transformers.
[MB]: And now you’re the CTO of that organization. How big an organization is it? I mean, having worked as a major systems integrator with one of the biggest technology firms in the world, I get the job.
[CP]: Yes.
[MB]: I wasn’t a CTO with them. Talk about the CTO role, because that’s an interesting role. It’s not necessarily a program manager responsible for delivery. So what is the CTO role, and how is it structured inside GE Vernova with you in it?
[CP]: For me, it’s a dream job. I get to play a key role in developing technology that I’m passionate about. We have a couple of different hats on. The first is to drive our technology strategy within the company and make sure that we have a product portfolio—the valves, the control and protection systems, and, increasingly importantly, the control and protection algorithms as a separate product—that enables us to deliver competitive solutions. For example, if our customers indicate a need for a higher power rating for a converter station, I have to make sure that within our product portfolio we have a valve product capable of delivering it. If not, I have to identify that way ahead of time so we can start developing a new valve that can do it.
Identifying what the market really needs, what is possible from a technology perspective, trends in technology development, and how those might improve the performance of our technology and products is part of the role my team plays every day, translating that into proposals for new R&D projects. This includes developing new control and protection features that complete our library of different control functionalities, enabling us to expand the number of applications in which we can implement our HVDC solutions. For example, we are now commissioning an offshore wind farm in the North Sea with a symmetrical monopole. That is an offshore wind farm connecting to shore, which is a very different application from a project connecting two points within the same AC grid with a bipolar solution. You need a whole additional set of control features for that, which need to be added to what we call our software trunk, our library of control features.
Continuously expanding this and making sure we have as complete a set of control and protection features as possible—to address the different potential applications, grid codes, and regions of the world, and to keep up to date with changes in those grid codes, such as the addition of synchronous grid-forming functionality—is all part of the product roadmaps we establish and use to shape our R&D portfolio.
[MB]: Last time you gave me a strong primer on LCC versus VSC. What I’m hearing you say is that GE Vernova is exploring having those technologies in-house, but doesn’t today—
[CP]: We have those technologies in-house, both LCC and VSC. For LCC, we have a very significant installed asset base. But, of course, the technologies themselves keep evolving, especially when it comes to control and protection. On the one hand, we need to keep up with technology developments themselves. For example, we can buy processors with much greater processing power for less money these days. What does that mean for our control platform? Can we get something more reliable, that takes up less space and is easier to maintain? We use those kinds of developments to come up with new versions of products that we already have in our portfolio.
The other thing is that we’re expanding the number of different kinds of applications for existing technology. To do that, we need to add features to our control library that enable this expansion into different applications. For example, if you have a symmetrical monopole system and want to use the same technology to develop a bipolar system, additional control functions need to be added to the software trunk, our library of control features, to make that work. In the same way, if the grid code changes and requires new functionality like synchronous grid-forming, we have to add that to our library of control functions.
[MB]: In the context of this, and without asking you to unveil any secret sauce, you’ve been in the role for a while. Are there any clear trends you’re seeing that you expect everybody is going to have to adapt to?
[CP]: What we’re seeing, for sure, is the trend toward the 2-gigawatt standard design at 525 kV. This is almost a real standard building block now, especially in Europe, but we also see it happening elsewhere in the world. Different grids and geographies may lead to different kinds of standard designs. The other standard design we now see appearing is at the 3-gigawatt level. In the US, of course, there are several projects that use 3 gigawatts at 500 kV, but we now also see this appearing in India for VSC-related technology. So that is definitely a technology trend that everybody in the market is moving toward.
From a control and protection perspective, we’re seeing a move toward having synchronous grid-forming capability included in the requested set of control features or control strategies to deal with a changing AC grid. We see an AC grid where many existing conventional power plants are being replaced with inverter-interfaced generation. That changes the dynamics of the grid and changes the way stable operation is guaranteed. It means that this inverter-interfaced generation is increasingly being asked to play a role in guaranteeing that stability. That is really what synchronous grid-forming capability does: the converters themselves can very quickly adjust their output based on things happening in the grid to help maintain grid stability. This is a completely new control feature that hasn’t been implemented before, so it has to go through a lot of development and testing to make sure it meets the grid-code requirements and really works.
[MB]: Of course, when I spoke to Mark O’Malley a couple of years ago—and I know you know Mark—the example I came up with was that it was basically a herd of rabbits out there. There were inverters everywhere, but they were grid-following, not grid-forming. The capability was there, but the standards weren’t. Mark and his efforts were strongly focused on the emerging grid-control standards. Have the standards emerged to the point where there is now coherence around grid-forming inverters?
[CP]: No, I wouldn’t say there’s coherence. We see that standards have emerged in some parts of the world and are emerging in other parts, but there are still differences between them. That essentially means our implementation of synchronous grid-forming may be a little different in one part of the world compared with another, which adds to the complexity of the control and protection algorithm library we have to maintain.
[MB]: Okay, so we’re starting to see standardization. Certainly when I talked to Mark, the obvious ability of VSC technology to be grid-forming was there. It’s power, and it creates a sine wave.
[CP]: Yeah.
[MB]: Now we’re standardizing on 2-gigawatt HVDC, so we’re getting modularity in one aspect, which is good, but we’re not quite at modularity and standardization in other things. I talked to Bent Flyvbjerg a couple of years ago as well, around the time his book was coming out, and one of the conversations we had was about how you get as modular as possible. Transmission is already one of the major megaproject types most likely to hit schedule and budget, but making it better is part of that increasing modularity.
[CP]: I think you’re definitely hitting an interesting point there. We are standardizing, if you can call it standardization, on power levels, voltage levels, and converter configuration. These are all 525 kV, 2 gigawatts, mostly bipolar converters, and often with a metallic return, which is definitely a very important point. It helps the supply chain build capacity around those characteristics. These are physical characteristics.
What we’re not seeing as much standardization on yet, but what no doubt will have to come if we’re moving toward a truly inverter-dominated grid, is how we define control modes and the performance of those control modes. Today that is described to some extent in grid codes and in our customer specifications, but it will probably be implemented a little differently by all the different vendors. They will all meet the requirements, but the implementations might be slightly different.
This is where the topic of multi-vendor interoperability comes in. InterOPERA, the follow-up to the project that I led, is very soon going to deliver proof that we can actually build functioning grids with HVDC converter stations from different vendors. But it probably also requires a lot of work toward defining how we implement control modes so that we can be confident they’ll work from the start, without having to go through very cumbersome iterative testing where everybody continues to tweak their control approach a little bit, without knowing what the other people are doing, until it eventually works.
[MB]: The burning question in my mind is: is this a mostly solved problem inside China, or are they still iterating through this as well?
[CP]: What the Chinese are showing is that multi-vendor operation is not a technical challenge. It can be done as long as information can be shared about control systems, interfaces, and definitions, and as long as the architecture of the grid allows that within whatever intellectual-property protection looks like in China.
In Europe, we’re choosing a different paradigm. Of course, we don’t like to share the detailed information of our control and protection system with our competitors, and vice versa. We spend a lot of money developing this. There’s a lot of intellectual property in there that gives us our competitive edge. So we have to find a way of making it work without exchanging all of that information, and that means we need a different approach.
In China, the way HVDC systems are designed is that the end user takes a much bigger role in the system design and in defining exactly how it should be implemented. That means you’ll have similar implementations between different vendors, which simplifies integrating the technology of different vendors. What you’ll also sometimes see is that the higher-level control and protection systems are delivered by one vendor and the lower-level systems by another. It’s typically the higher-level control and protection between different converters that determines whether they’re going to work together. So if those are from the same vendor, it’s easier to achieve multi-vendor interoperability among converter stations than if they are from different vendors.
[MB]: There’s a structural thing that really ties back to the PROMOTioN project. They’ve solved more of those problems simply because of their government model. Remind me: they have a single transmission system operator for all of China?
[CP]: They have two: China Southern and China State Grid.
[MB]: That is a much less complex TSO landscape than we’ve got in the West.
[CP]: And the TSOs also have a stake in some of the OEMs developing this technology. So they own part of the technology and can therefore help align and exchange information that would otherwise be protected by IP between those vendors, which of course helps the integration.
[MB]: Not actually replicable in Europe or the United States, I would say.
[CP]: Well, we have a different system, which has its own pros and cons, and we have to take a different route. But it’s certainly not technically impossible. In fact, multi-vendor systems have been around for a long time for LCC systems. We’ve been doing this for decades. There’s less information that needs to be shared, which makes them easier to integrate. But it shows that it can be done if the will is there and if the business case is there.
[MB]: Let’s pivot a little bit. This might not be directly in your wheelhouse because you’re setting strategy and research agendas, but right now the world is going through this massive spate of electrification. The supply chains are stretched. Timelines for getting technologies are stretched. That probably means, I would assume, GE Vernova’s order book is absolutely full and the place is humming. Is there an expectation of relief? Is manufacturing capability coming online to deal with this?
[CP]: I think it’s fair to say that relief is already here somewhat. Last time we spoke, I think, was when we found ourselves really on this ramp-up in terms of projects being announced and large tenders being signed, vendors getting their order books filled very, very quickly, and developers and utilities scrambling to get a production slot to meet their timelines. However, some things have changed a little since then. First of all, we’ve seen a slight slowdown in the uptake of HVDC, notably in the United States, due to all kinds of rules from the current administration. But also in Europe, some of the focus has shifted toward Ukraine and everything that comes with it.
It’s led to a speeding up of some project plans, but also probably a pivot away of some of the funds that were dedicated to solving the energy transition toward supporting Ukraine and bolstering our security at home. So we see that demand for HVDC systems has dropped off a bit. It is still significant and still growing, but not quite as fast as before. At the same time, what all vendors are really seeing is a bull market for HVDC. It is growing faster than we’ve ever seen before. It is increasingly becoming part of the regular transmission planner’s toolbox, and that means we’ll probably see increasing growth for a while to come.
Of course, we’re all investing in capacity, and some of that capacity is beginning to come online. At the very least, we know when it’s going to come online and can take that into account in what we bid for. So some of the pressure is beginning to come off, which we also see in the competitive landscape around us. At the same time, I would not expect really huge amounts of additional capacity to come online any time soon on top of what has already been invested in. We also want to see what is going to happen to the HVDC landscape. Will this growth persist or not? And what will really happen when all the factories being built today open their doors and increase capacity even further?
[MB]: Certainly from the UK, the Black Sea Interconnector from Georgia to Romania is approved in principle, but it’s not going anywhere as long as there’s a live war in Ukraine.
[CP]: There are a few other projects like that as well, where the plan is there and it’s approved in principle, but now we have to go and find financing. Or it’s in the plan, but we realize the offshore wind market is not as strong as it used to be, so we’re postponing some of the offshore wind connections. That doesn’t mean they won’t happen. It just creates a little uncertainty around exactly when. Of course, we don’t want to be building factories that will then be empty, so we adjust what we do based on a risk profile, as do all the other competitors in the market. I would imagine it is a different—
[MB]: —geopolitical landscape than when we last spoke and you were North America-based. And now, I’m just going to say, you’re a lot closer to one problem area and a lot farther away from another problem area.
[CP]: Exactly. Except both have really developed into problem areas. I think the biggest challenge we’re facing is the ability to staff projects: the ability to hire experienced and skilled engineers who can start contributing to product development and project delivery at the scale and growth levels the industry is still demanding. Even though the growth levels have come down a little, they’re still not low enough to match what is available in terms of human support on the other end. I think that remains one of the challenges: getting enough skilled engineers into this field to work on all the projects that need to be done.
As an industry, we’re pivoting in ways to deal with that problem. More standardized solutions are one way; they reduce the engineering hours per project. We’re also looking at what AI can do for us to help speed things up. But in the end, we still need people to do the work. That is, I think, the main challenge that probably most vendors and OEMs in this business are facing today: getting the people, getting them trained, and getting them to start contributing to real projects.
[MB]: So I have a habit of, every once in a while, looking at a different domain and looking at the percentage of engineers who are trained in China, or Chinese nationals trained externally, versus the rest of the world. I’m going to assume that for power engineering, the ratios are still extraordinarily weighted toward Chinese nationals going through many of these programs. Is that a fair assumption, and does that impact GE Vernova’s workforce composition?
[CP]: First of all, I’m not sure how many of the students would be Chinese or from other parts of Asia. But when I go and give lectures, which I often do at many European universities, there is a very large number of foreign students in the classroom, as opposed to UK or Dutch students, for example, in the two countries where I’ve lived and where I lecture. So I would probably agree that we have an issue in terms of the number of people from homegrown schools, let’s say, opting for an engineering degree, and that we have a lot of foreign students coming to pursue those degrees in European universities, who then also, of course, join GE to contribute here.
[MB]: It is fascinating to me. One of the things I observed in the United States over the past year was that a full 50% of foreign students in the top universities were Chinese nationals. Of course, after their education, many of them stayed. Traditionally, that’s happening a lot less now, but they’re also going back. The other thing I observed recently was that Nature released its highest-cited universities. One of the striking things was that American universities had almost fallen off. I aggregated Europe and China and compared them with the United States, and it was China, Europe, United States, in that order, which was quite substantially different. The Chinese institutions have just shot up the ranks. The focus on education there has shot up, the United States has declined, and Europe has stayed very strong.
Obviously, the number of foreign students in US universities has plummeted in the past year, so that’s going to have a significant impact. You mentioned AI. The people I know who follow AI papers say it’s something like 60% to 80% Chinese researchers. They’re just dominating so many fields of STEM. And speaking of students and the new workforce, it’s Engineering Month. So let’s talk about Engineering Month. Is this a GE Vernova thing? When I looked at it, it seemed to be a North American pattern. But you’re doing it based out of Paris, so tell people about Engineering Month in general and then GE Vernova’s interpretation of it.
[CP]: I don’t actually know if this is a thing beyond GE Vernova. Certainly in my previous role, we did not have a celebration of Engineering Month. It’s something I really bumped into when I joined GE Vernova, what is it now, eight months ago? And really, what it is is a celebration of engineering excellence. At the core of everything we do is technology and the ability to engineer technology into useful products that enable competitive solutions. One of the things I probably underestimated a little until I joined here is the amount of detail, the depth, the creativity, and the persistence it takes to create products that can control the amount of power needed to feed entire cities on a microsecond-by-microsecond basis. What this week is about is really highlighting what it takes to do that.
What are all the different disciplines, the different phases of a project, and the different phases of product development? What are all the different things we need to think about? And how do we place that in the greater context of what we’re trying to achieve: creating energy security, creating a clean and sustainable power supply, enabling safety, helping economies and people thrive, ultimately, and the role that engineering plays in that?
[MB]: You know how I feel about engineers. I’m not an engineer. At some point or other, some guidance counselor missed the switch, because I should have been one. But I spend a lot of time dealing with engineering disciplines and engineers. And so I’m privileged, honored, and very grateful that you invited me to speak to GE Vernova’s engineers. I’m looking forward to it.
[CP]: Looking forward to it.
[MB]: And on that note, I guess it’s kind of the end of our time together for today. So the question I would ask you is the question of underestimation. Do you think the industry is underestimating some particular part of the problem set that’s going to cause problems over the next decade?
[CP]: The fundamental change the grid is going to undergo in the next decade or decades is the shift away from being a grid supplied by rotating generators whose characteristics we understand very well, and on which essentially the entire grid design is based, to a grid supplied by distributed inverter-interfaced resources. That is a fundamental shift in the way we operate grids, but also in the way we design grids and guarantee stability in their operation.
I wouldn’t say we’re underestimating what that shift really means. I think people are quite aware of what it means. But are we really ready for that shift, and do we fully understand what the solution is? Things like synchronous grid-forming are part of the solution, but is that enough? There is still a bit of an open end there, which would be great to learn more about with future guests in future episodes.
[MB]: Certainly, talking with Mark O’Malley was an eye-opening experience. It was a tremendous opportunity for me. I’m so privileged that so many people have shared amazing stuff with me. And on that note, Case, thank you so much for spending an hour with me. I’m looking forward to talking to your engineers in a few weeks, and I’m sure we’ll talk again soon.
[CP]: It was my pleasure, as always. Thanks a lot for the opportunity, Michael. I appreciate it.
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