EngenuitySC Commercialization and Entrepreneurial Training Project

Hughes, Meghan ; Hutton, Katherine R

DOI  :  10.2172/1059693
RP-ID  :  DE-EE0003218-1
PID  :  OSTI ID: 1059693

美国|英语

来源: SciTech Connect

【 摘 要 】

A team led by EngenuitySC has performed education and outreach on development of advanced energy markets that will enable wider use of clean energy technologies. This report details the efforts that have made significant advances to improve the market place through education, outreach, and increased communications between industry members. The project resulted in two self-funded industry clusters known as the Fuel Cell Collaborative and NuHub. This project has focused on building and strengthening the leading clean energy clusters in South Carolina: nuclear energy and fuel cell technologies. For the nuclear industry, a new cluster was developed that is now known as NuHub. This cluster has already engaged over 25 nuclear industry leaders or suppliers, four public sector partners, six community economic development foundations, and nearly ten academic partners in a 175 mile radius between Augusta, Georgia and Charlotte, North Carolina. Our outreach has touched over 2,000 stakeholders through the website alone, not including the public audiences and members of the business community reached through news stories and releases that were distributed to over 620 print and online publications. NuHub has established a formal leadership structure, developed subcommittees to focus on industry issues, instituted educational programs for the workforce, and created an industry funding structure that will sustain the industry cluster and mission. NuHub has participated in a wide-variety of community building and outreach activities since its formation under this grant. In the two years since its creation in 2010, we have initiated efforts focused in four main areas that correlate with the four NuHub subcommittees including: innovation, workforce development, industry engagement, and marketing and communications. NuHub successfully raised over $160,000 in both public and private funding, which has supported work to grow the cluster and engage partners including NuScale, Fluor, and Holtec International for research about deployment of advanced small modular reactor (SMR) technologies. The workforce training efforts from NuHub have focused on assisting existing industry to fill positions needed to construct and operate new nuclear plants being built at the VC Summer plant in Jenkinsville, SC and at Plant Votgle in Augusta, Georgia both of whom are constructing the first nuclear reactors (Westinghouse AP 1000 units), to be built in over 30 years. This includes a partnership with Midlands Technical College to train reactor operators and the development of training facilities to support workforce development activities. It is anticipated that approximately 70 students a year will be trained through these programs in the next five years, and it will be expanded to meet new industry needs.