This year the Australian Power Institute (API) has called for submissions from universities to propose innovative ideas or projects that promote sustainability and excellence in Australia's power engineering sector.

In response to the API's call Associate Professor Tam Nguyen, from the School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering at UWA, prepared and submitted a proposal requesting the API's support for establishing a new electric machines laboratory for undergraduate power engineering teaching. "The new laboratory will allow students to have hands-on experience in directly working and experimenting with a wide range of electric machines, of the kinds used in the power industry", explained Associate Professor Tam Nguyen.

The successful submission lead to the "Sustainability and Excellence in Australia's Power Engineering" Agreement in August 2008 between the API and UWA in which the API, the School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering and the Faculty of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics will fund, in equal proportion, $139,500.00 for acquiring the electric machines for the new laboratory. It is expected the laboratory will be fully operational by 2009. The UWA and API Agreement recognises the commitment towards power engineering education at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

The Faculty of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics is grateful for Western Power's continued support of its students. In 2009, 29 Western Power scholarships were awarded to second and third years students who are pursuing their electrical and electronics engineering degree with specialisation in the power stream.

One of this year's recipients Aislinn Van der Walt said "I am honoured to have been awarded a Western Power Scholarship. It is fantastic to achieve such recognition. The scholarship will greatly help my studies towards an electrical and electronic engineering degree. I would like to say thank you to both Western Power and The University of Western Australia for this opportunity".