ongoing masters degree dilemma

My roommate just forwarded me a link to a job advertisement for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Sure, working for the government is all but off-limits, and it's in DC so no reasonable salary could possibly offset the stratospheric living costs up there, but it's nice to see nonetheless. They're looking for folks with plenty of experience, but it's basically an all-call with no specific details or requirements, and the low end of the salary range is $110k. In other words, they're looking to do what the NRC is doing and hire boatloads of experienced engineers by throwing huge stacks of cash at anyone who even makes eye contact. Apparently the government has hopped on board the "holy crap, the power grid in this country sucks and although we can't correct decades of neglect very fast we'd better get out there and grab our share of power engineering experience before everyone else jumps in and the labor market dries up" boat.

Of course, this barely affect me if at all because I'm not even in that ballpark in power systems experience. But, let's say I had an MSEE with a power engineering focus, a few years dealing with nuke plant interconnection agreements, and just for good measure a PE license as well. Then I could at least be a candidate for that stuff. And the available jobs should only keep going up.* Better yet, such a skill set could eventually be in high enough demand that I could become a mercenary and do short-term contract work. That MSEE is looking pretty damn worthwhile right about now.

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* One of the presenters at the conference I just attended was a guy from one of the several regional grid operators around the country. I found his presentation the most interesting of any last week, so I talked to him for a while afterward. As an older guy, he seemed very concerned about the pending state of the power engineering industry when lots of folks start retiring and there aren't enough young guys around to pick up the load, and thinks anyone with nuclear and/or transmission experience will be on the good end of such a huge feeding frenzy in a few years that he'll basically be able to write his own ticket, as he put it. He's doing everything he can to get his kids to go into this field because he doesn't see an upper limit on its potential. I don't exactly share his level of optimism, as the rapid importation of enginerds from overseas will quell any major labor shortage (seriously, when have engineers ever caught a break recently?), but it is worth pondering what the future of the power industry will look like and perhaps positioning myself now to best take advantage of that later.