The Department of Electrical Engineering (DEE) of Tsinghua University, founded in 1932, is one of the earliest five engineering departments in Tsinghua University.

After more than 80 years of vigorous development, the Department of Electrical Engineering has cultivated a large number of outstanding talents. By the end of 2017, a total of 36 department alumni had been elected as academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) or the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE). Among them are former or current teachers and graduates of the Department of Electrical Engineering. More graduates have become full-time professors, leaders or core technicians of power-related enterprises, influential politicians and so on, serving all over the world.

In order to meet the needs of sci-tech and social development, the Department took the lead in merging the three majors of power system and automation, motor and high voltage technology into one major of electrical engineering and automation in 1989 in the field of undergraduate training. In terms of postgraduate training, there are five doctoral and five master's degree conferring units in power system and automation, motor and electrical appliances, high voltage and insulation technology, electric theory and new technology, power electronics and power transmission, among which the first four doctoral degree conferring units are the first batch of key disciplines in China. In June 1996, the Academic Degree Committee of the State Council approved our department as a pilot unit for exercising the right to grant doctoral degrees to electrical engineering disciplines according to the first-level disciplines. It ranked first in the country in the three disciplines organized by the Ministry of Education in 2002, 2006 and 2012, and was evaluated as A+ in the fourth Disciplines Evaluation in 2016.

The Department of Electrical Engineering has always had a fine tradition of attaching importance to teaching. Its teaching result of "Training high-quality talents in electrical engineering for the main battlefield of national economic construction" won the only special award in the first National Award for teaching achievement awarded in 1997. In 2014, the undergraduate education reform project "Construction of the training system of top innovative talents in electrical engineering for the new needs of the country and the great changes in the industry" won the second prize for National Teaching Achievements. In addition, many other educational reform projects have won the first prize and second prize for Beijing's teaching achievements.

In 2017, the Department of Electrical Engineering was approved to enroll undergraduates in the energy category. At present, it has about 120 undergraduates (including 15 in the International Energy Internet Class) about 70 postgraduates (including the ones in the Graduate School at Shenzhen), and about 70 doctoral students. It lays emphasis on the training pattern of undergraduates with “wide knowledge and firm basic theories”, and pays attention to the practical application in the training of professional master students, and the academic performance in training of doctoral students. As a result, it forms a large-scale training pattern of high-level talents with distinctive characteristics in electrical engineering.