THE National Grid SA, a subsidiary of Saudi Electricity Company, declared that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding on the Strategic Partnerships Project with Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories (SEL), an American corporation, which includes among its purposes, provision of training programs and courses to Saudi scholarship grantees in Washington, especially those specialized in engineering, energy, IT and electricity. This move will support the social responsibility program implemented by the company to serve the Saudi society and citizens inside the country and abroad. Engineer Laith Al-Bassam, CEO of National Grid SA, stated that a large number of Saudi scholarship grantees in Washington University have benefited from such advanced courses and programs over about eighteen months, pointing out that the training courses are conducted at centers and headquarters of SEL that are equipped with the latest technologies according to each field. Experiential training is conducted at the labs of the company and attended by students and researchers from different nationalities to exchange experience. Al-Bassam assured that through Strategic Partnerships Project, these programs are developed to provide more specialized technical and technological training to Saudi scholarship grantees with the aim to transfer modern technologies and sciences in various fields to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia through its citizens as part of Vision 2030 of the KSA and taking advantage of the presence of those scholarship grantees in these countries and in close proximity to such international corporations to apply academic sciences and conduct hands on training at specialized centers and sites. He highlighted that the training courses include general courses in the field of electricity and the different engineering fields, as well as specialized courses in specific fields such as (Protecting Power System for Engineers), that lasted for 35 hours. An intensive course will be launched for a number of scholarship grantees at the beginning of next January 2018, which will last for fifteen weeks. The CEO of National Grid SA said the agreement concluded with the American company comes among a number of strategic partnership agreements signed with global corporations and institutions in numerous countries in electricity sector, confirming that the next period will witness expansion in this project to include other states in USA and other European countries such as Germany and France in addition to Asian countries such as China, South Korea, and Japan. It is worth mentioning that Saudi Electricity Company has major training programs outside KSA through which Saudi engineers and technicians in the company are granted scholarships at leading international companies and institutes specialized in electricity industry with the aim to transfer modern expertise and technologies to the Kingdom, including a team of Saudi engineers and technicians who are granted scholarships to the US to train on running and commissioning of solar energy programs and stations as part of the renewable energy projects being implemented in the Kingdom. — SG