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About PTS
Portland, Oregon-based Professional Training Systems, Inc. (PTS) was founded in 1979 to provide electric utility system training. Many of PTS's repeat customer electric utilities tell us that we are the best in North America for providing electrical operations training.
We believe the customer is always right—especially so in this case. List of repeat customers.
The lead instructor, Skip Collier has a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Nevada at Reno, and an MBA from Portland State University. He worked for 12 years as a field engineer, field-engineering supervisor and construction project manager at General Electric Company. This experience provided him with a very practical understanding of all the equipment involved in generating power and in getting the power to the customer.
One of Collier's jobs was a generator start-up engineer with the responsibility of all pre-energization checkout of new generating plants. This included connecting the generator to the system for the first time and verifing that all electrical systems were functioning correctly. As an integral part of this online generator testing, Collier was in on-going telephone communication with system operators. This interaction with system operators has provided a comprehensive understanding of the relationship of generator operators and system operators.
Prior to teaching electrical classes, Collier taught marketing and finance classes at Portland Community College and computer programming classes in the School of Business at Portland State University. This teaching experience, combined with the business and technical aspects of being a power generation construction project manger, results in an instructor that can easily combine utility economics with the technical aspects of utility operations.
EUSO Takes Flight in 1979
More than 14,000 utility employees throughout the United States and Canada have attended PTS's Electric Utility System Operation (EUSO) class.
The EUSO class was developed in 1979 to provide utility employees with a thorough understanding of the operations of an electric utility. The goal in developing the EUSO class was to have a course that could explain the electrical world to utility employees without complex mathematics. This goal has been realized and is supported by the fact that employees from every department in an electric utility rate the class as excellent, including those employees whose highest level of formal education in math was in the first year or two of high school.
A common comment in evaluations of the initial EUSO classes was, "Excellent class, but do you have anything more advanced?"
As a result, PTS developed two follow-up classes that cover the distribution system in more detail. While the EUSO class puts equal emphasis on generation, transmission and distribution, many utilities have no generation. Even in utilities with generation, many employees such as those in customer service, and those working on or with line crews, work almost exclusively with distribution.
Because the technical backgrounds of line workers and customer service employees are so different, it was impossible to develop one class that could serve each group equally well. As a result, two distribution classes were developed.
CAEDS and EDS Come to Life
The less technical class, Customer Aspects of Electrical Distribution Systems (CAEDS), is targeted to account executives, customers service employees, communications and marketing employees, and other utility employees whose main job function is not engineering technical.
The more technical class, Electrical Distribution Systems (EDS), targets apprentices and journey-level line workers, substation workers, telecommunication workers, SCADA employees, relay technicians, and engineers new to the distribution system.
IESO Takes Shape
PTS's fourth class, Industrial Electrical Systems Operations (IESO) was also developed in 1979. Although not as widely marketed as the EUSO class, we believe IESO is the number one class of its type in the country. The IESO class is designed for purchasing staff, plant and building engineers without an electrical engineering degree, plant electricians and building electricians. It is currently only offered on an in-house basis through groups such as purchasing associations, engineering associations and the Building Owners and Managers Association.
PTS Classes in the New Millenium
PTS has identified several new classes that it will develop for 2005 that offer the same level of detail, but for specialized areas within the utility industry. These classes include Utility Economics, Utility Business System Operations, and Advaced Utility Distribution Systems.
For more information please contact PTS, or sign up to be notified of upcoming classes via e-mail.
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