 I am the director of international services for HSI and the host for today's show, Perspectives on Energy. Today I have no guests. I'm doing a solo show again and I'm going to be talking about DERC system operator certification. Some of the things that changed in the last couple of years. So it's been a while since I've delivered this training. I've been doing about pre-sessions in the last couple of months. So it's been rather interesting that helping some of the new system operator candidates get ready for their certification exam. And just wanted to talk about some of the different things that I've noticed, some of the different types of candidates that I've seen recently and how the exam itself has changed. So one thing I want to point out was that it's rather interesting how our exams have changed in this regard. So I want to make sure we have that little discussion about that and kind of show how things are looking over the next time. So since the last few years and how we're looking one over four. So what is a NERC system operator certification? Well, that is a, think of it as a credential to be able to operate the local electric system to actually be a grid operator. Anything having to do with 100 kilovolter above and operating that type of thing in the power grid. That's something that is required to have. There's several types of different certifications. There's a reliability coordinator certification that allows you to do any one of those jobs in that field. And then there's a transmission operator certification, which has less, less requirements to it. And there's a few others as well, like a BIT, which is a balancing interchange and transmission. And there's one that has balancing interchange. So one of the things that the, the one I always kind of encourage people to take as far as an exam goes is the RC system operator. Certification, namely, because it, even though it's, it's, it's the longest exam has, has the most questions, right? It tends to cover these subject areas and not so much depth and detail. All the other ones because they kind of go into more depth into the particular knowledge areas. So, one of the things that that NERC has been has been doing over the last few years and that hasn't changed much is the fact that they, they have the exam. Has a certain number of questions. You have a passing score, of course. And then within those number of questions, they have a certain number of a test. Final questions that are not, they're not graded, but you don't know which those are. So you'd have to take that examination and answer those questions as best you can. Then they will determine whether those questions are worthy of the next batch of questions in the test. So, 1 of the things that's interesting about this is that, of course, the RC certification has also the highest number of continuing education, our requirements. That's 2, they have a requirement of 200 continuing education hours, the H is over a 3 year period. The to P, I believe, and the, and the, well, it has a lot less like 140. And I think the B, I, B, T has 160 hours. So, naturally, there, there's, there's a lot less burdensome for the operators actually take that exam and maintain that credential. The problem is that they can't go do any function that requires, for example, balancing knowledge or ever change knowledge or even reliability coordinator knowledge. They will be, they will be limited to that role that they're certified for. So, it's not unheard of for an operator who took an exam to go ahead and retest later for, for an upgrade, right? And, and try to work on a promotion. But either way, 1 of the things I noticed is that if you want to have a lot more career opportunities as an operator usually might want to go for the RC exam certification. Usually the exam questions are pretty much all the same and they are just more of them, but they're not in so much in depth. We here at HSI, we, we have been doing exam preparation training for that exam for a while, even before we were, we became a part of HSI as SOS. We were doing it for like a decade or more. When I first got certified, I actually took that exam with the help of SOS. I did well, I passed it down a long time ago. Now, I'm probably going to take it again, just let mine expire and then take it in the next couple of years. But one of the interesting things I've noticed is that the exam has changed dramatically as far as what they're asking. One of the things I've noticed is that the, the questions are no longer the recall type questions or like they used to be, they still have a few. But now the questions are more sort of a situational solve, solve the current scenario type of thing where they give you a scenario and ask you, what would you do in a scenario? It was the best course of action scenario. And a lot of times that they're, they're basically really testing your knowledge, right? And making sure you know the concepts of what you're doing. Unfortunately, right now it's over the last four or five years, there has been quite a knowledge drain in this field, a lot of retirements, a lot of people have done and for mostly retirements, right? And what has happened is that they coupled with the fact that the exam was, they raise a cut score, right? Meaning that they raise the minimum passing score for the exam. And one of the things that we're noticing as well is that there's, there's a direct correlation of course on the cut score cut, cut a certain percentage of people out of the bottom. But if you were, you were barely passing with the cuts course or low, I think one of the reasons that, that, that was so dramatic, dramatically increased the number of people that were failing probably had to deal with the fact that they weren't quite grasping the other core concepts. And instead, they were trying to memorize a sample test questions. So, so what also I think attributed to that as well is the fact that a lot of the new applicants to this career field are not really coming from the, from the industry exactly right they're coming from other fields. And, and we're glad they're given the opportunity and we're very happy and welcome them here. But at the same time, a lot of times they don't have, they don't have a lot of this basic skills related to the electric utility industry. So, oftentimes they may struggle with some of the concepts, you know, whether it's voltage or current or impedance or difference between resistance and line reactants and that sort of thing. And some of the math that goes behind them. Fortunately for them, unfortunately for us, we, we offer a pretty solid NERC test prep program, but we have the NERC exam test prep. So this, this is, you can go to this website and we in here have the various options, right? You have an online online test prep training, which will get you through all, you know, all the different knowledge areas, give you practice exams, teach you the concepts as well. And pretty much prepping for the exam right in this case. And in most cases, most people pretty much saw any this week. However, I am actually delivering the in-person three and a half day, three and a half day in-person instructor course, which is like a final, final prep before they take their exam. In fact, we end the, we end the exam, we end the class on Wednesday, tomorrow afternoon, and well, on the third, on the fourth day, we ended at noon half day and somebody has already scheduled their exam for that afternoon. So they're not wasting any time. So they basically have gone through all the online modules. They're, they've done a lot of the sample test questions and then now they're pretty much ready to answer any final doubts they have. And that's where this instructor-led class comes into effect, which is one thing I'm helping deliver these last couple of weeks. Pretty confident. I think the Muslim will pass. I mean, based on the questions they've asked me, I think they'll do a good job. So that's one example. Also, we have another, another aspect of what we do is we do Friday, every Friday we have a one and a half, two-hour session where we do some mentoring online. And it's live. It's also instructor-led. And in that case, we help them pass. Well, we help them answer some, some questions they have on the, either the modules or some of the sample test questions. So usually that, that ends up being, though, our pass rate is pretty good when it comes to folks that have gone through our program, but overall, right now, the pass rate for the exam as of this year is 60, almost 63%. Last year, it was 59%. So it's gotten a little better, but, but they didn't make, did they cut, they raised the cut score a couple of years ago. So that, that made matters really, really challenging for some of these applicants, right? And so there are some ideas regarding maybe having them go through some kind of like prerequisite training before they start some of these nurse certification modules or at least get them through the Better Foundation, right? So before they start, these all have a cost to them. There's a price for the, for the online training. There's a price for the instructor-led training. And if you're already signed up to either one of those, the online, the Friday mentoring sessions are already included in one of those prices. So you work with attendance often as you want. So usually, you know, we have pretty good feedback on that. So one of the things that I think is, is, is, is not concerning, but notice a trend is that the fact that it's getting harder and harder to find personnel from within the industry, right, that are coming up to become system operators. It's just a matter of the knowledge drain and just not having the available personnel. In the past, what I would notice is usually they would recruit from within. It's usually personnel that were engineers in the field, engineers or some in either transmission planning or those sorts of jobs. Usually they would also recruit from the bargaining unit site, which is folks that are in the union. IDW, they would hire from either substation and attrition or they would hire personnel from the power plant. So those are those. And sometimes even transmission operations personnel. So those are usually usually really ideal candidates, right, to be able to fill these roles. Most of them had a pretty solid understanding of power power systems and pretty much how that part system works. And we even have some success with, with hiring personnel from the distribution side, which and even the distribution control center operators also did a pretty good job when they came over to work for the transmission of the bulk electric system operation site. So for the most part, that was pretty successful. We didn't have a lot of issues. A lot of them understood the power line flows, a lot of them understood voltage support and a lot of them understood, you know, issues with reliability. But when we're trying to help personnel that came from other industries, somewhat related, I mean, some of them came from the energy industries, but usually that has to do with either gas or even utilities. So water there, they have a little bit harder time, right, getting through some of this training and unless they're part of a larger program that puts them through a whole bigger systematic approach where they're getting a lot of these like basic skills. I mean, if they're coming in from the street and trying to pass the exam by taking this test program. They have a hard time, but I think we do a pretty good job of preparing them. Right. So, so that's one of the things that I think we're pretty happy about. So, yeah, and eventually I think what takes place as well is that. One thing I've seen right in these are in person training sessions is that. Yeah, nothing beats the whole in person face of training. I know a lot of us decided to go with with the online or even the live instructor led online training, but the, the account of the type of feedback you get from in person. The type of teamwork you get the type of like interaction you're getting not just with the instructor like myself, but also the interaction you're getting with the other participants in class. Is is really, really, really impactful significant and I think it makes a really huge difference when it comes to better preparing for this exam. Today, for example, there was a case where there was a there was an exam question that even stopped me a little bit, right? And I was trying to have to stay through it, but one of the students in class kind of figured it out and then I kind of reminded me of something that I was thinking about. And sure enough, that's the way you solve the problem. So then once he did that, everybody else in the class kind of was illuminated immediately. In the sense that that's a pretty tough question, but they were able to do it and had to do with line outages and line outage distribution factors and. And how that gets redistributed on all the other transmission range, right? So it was a really challenging question, but it's pretty simple when you think back now, but if you're on an exam and kind of can't figure it out, you know, you don't have a lot of time. They give you three hours to answer. I think it's 120 questions, but the reality is that you're, you're not going to spend a lot of time on one question that you're having trouble with your market and come back to it. So when so, so that's something that we're constantly evolving in our program, right? So we're we're applying. If anybody remembers exam questions, you know, from the exam, then we go ahead and kind of like update our materials based on that and keep it up to date up to date with the latest examples of what they've what they've seen in the exam. So hopefully that gets everybody ready and we've had quite a great interaction in the last few weeks when I've had these courses. So I think we're our program has improved a great deal to accommodate some of these newer applicants that are coming from different, different industries altogether. So it's been an interesting change. It's been a little bit of a challenge, but I think we've done a pretty good job in meeting that and getting them better prepared to start our training to then take a better advantage of our training and how that operates. So the other thing that I wanted to bring up finally is the fact that this knowledge drain isn't going to isn't going to stop. We're looking at potentially seeing a lot more retirements happen over the next three to four years. And one thing that's that concerns the industry quite a bit is a fight that it's not a string and losing a lot of experience losing a lot of very, very seasoned operators. So the problem is now it's it's it's now going on and finding new new new operators to just to certify and train and from what I've seen now it's it's becoming pretty difficult already. If you're having to find personnel that they're not even in the industry to fill these job roles. It's going to be even more difficult after that. And then of course, coupled out with the fact that there will be more, more competition for these highly skilled jobs. For example, there's going to be a short a shortage of engineers in the next few years. So they're saying somewhat over the next five years over five million, I mean, I'm sorry, over one million unfilled role job roles for engineers. So eventually there's going to be recruiting and poaching from the not just within our industry, but across the they're going to take engineers from our industry to many other industry, right? Usually the electric utility industry is is has quite a complement of engineers working for it. So if you and you start to see that change happen already, and you'll see, for example, you're seeing it now, right? A lot of engineers are just being made some some pretty, pretty attractive offers to leave the utility industry and go work for other industries. I mean, they may be related industry, but the fact they're leaving it and sure enough, you know, that they're you're going to see a lot of movement of that in that in that arena. So what's to say, you know, they're the the the turnover its situation might get a lot more serious in that time. So that's one of the concerns that I think I share with a lot of the a lot of the professionals in our industry and leadership as well. The other thing that we're concerning concern with also is the fact that as these retirements come up. A lot of them are retiring even even earlier. So given during the whole pandemic situation, a lot of personnel opted just to retire two, three years earlier than they normally would. And that was an example of what happened, right? So so that's something that that there's a few solutions that they're thinking about in that regard. I mean, I had a doctor on one of my shows previously that we discussed the idea of health optimization to keep, you know, that that workforce working and engage a little longer. Right. That was one solution. I was Dr. Rudolph. I had him on. There's a few months ago. Another solution, of course, is is changing the way we we train and also changing the way we hire. So several different things that are looking at one example of that would be, for example, it's, it's, it's hiring earlier at a college and doing some more, more applied internships. So that will be a solution that will be looked at because because if the industry is having trouble with it with a shortage of engineers or the universities is having trouble with graduation rates of engineers, and they're also having trouble with enrollment. Not a lot of people are getting into engineering school and even fewer people are graduating with engineering degrees. So that's going to present itself, you know, in some time. So, so, but, but as we deal with the immediate need of certifying system operators. I'm very happy to report that we at HSI are offering a pretty, pretty solid, strong program to give everybody a good. NERC certification preparations, a system where they can either do online training, they can do a three and a half day live instructor that course they even have an online online version of that course also with instructors and they also offer, of course, a weekly mentoring. So, usually with that is a pretty solid foundation and approach to be able to prepare for this certification exams. Again, thank you again for taking a look at this video and for more information. Please visit us at HSI dot com. Look at industrial skills or just look up NERC test prep training at HSI and it'll do a major right to that. And maybe I'll see you in one of the classes and I'll be one of your instructors. Again, this is Guillermo Sabatier, director of HSI's international services. And once again, thank you for joining us. Have a great afternoon.