The Roanoke Time business section reports that a GE plant here is hiring 30 new electrical engineers to meet growing demand for power inverters. Inverters convert DC power to the AC power needed by the electrical grid.
GE is a major supplier of industrial inverters, and the company reports strong growth in wind energy generation is driving the company expansion.
How about your region? Have you done a systematic evaluation of the businesses in your area for potential growth in the Energy Economy? Could energy (hydrogen, solar, wind, tidal, nuclear) be an economic development strategy for your region over the next thirty years, as the world moves away from fossil fuels to other alternatives? As always, affordable broadband is going to the railhead and highway of these emerging trends. Are you ready? Do you have job force training and retraining programs in place? Are your high schools and community colleges teaching the high tech manufacturing skills that will be needed? Do those schools have a CNC program? Hint: if you don't know what that means, you're already in trouble).