IEEE Power and Energy Society Chapters – What’s New?

Dear PES Members, first and foremost, I wish you a prosperous 2019!

Did you know that we have nearly 260 Power and Energy chapters and 380 student chapters worldwide? There is likely one near you, so please visit our PES Chapter Locator to get in touch with your local chapter and find out about their technical activities such as distinguished lecturer presentations, technical workshop, courses and social events. Many activities organized by PES Chapters are free, and they provide a great opportunity to learn about the hottest technical topics of interest to our professional community, and connect and network with other power and energy professionals and students from your area. Your local PES chapter activities are organized by volunteers from your communities, volunteers like myself. I have been an IEEE volunteer since my days as a student and I am proudly continuing to serve our Society to help shape it into a society of the future to meet the needs of upcoming generations. If you would like to join us as a volunteer with your local chapter or if you would like to know how to form a new chapter in your area, please email me.

What is new with PES Chapters? We continue to grow at an unprecedented rate with our student chapters, only this past year we formed nearly 60 new student chapters, which show our students are recognizing the value of IEEE PES membership. One of our strategic goals is to help students transition into PES young professionals, to continue benefiting from PES membership past their university graduation. In order to serve our students better, we are expanding our committee that coordinates IEEE PES student branch chapters into a new PES Chapters Student Activities Committee with close to 50 new student and young professional volunteers. We are creating new initiatives to recognize and award active student chapters, to help form new chapters and revive chapters that may be struggling.

For professional chapters, we are focusing on expanding the Distinguished Lecturer Program, so it is utilized by more chapters worldwide. This year we have expanded the list of distinguished lecturers with six new prominent speakers, totaling now to more than 100 highly regarded professionals from both industry and academia. PES chapters utilize the Distinguished Lecturer Program, which is financially supported by PES, to bring the world renowned experts to speak at local chapter events.

We are also working on developing new tools to help us monitor the health of our PES chapters, so we can ensure all our chapters are active and delivering value to our members in all parts of the world. We are also introducing new tools to help our chapter volunteers be more efficient in their work by introducing more online resources.

A very important new chapters’ initiative is focused on industry workshops delivered locally in their respective areas. These workshops provide a forum for utilities, manufacturers, consulting companies and academia to meet and discuss hot topics, such as for example grid modernization, or grid restoration following natural disasters.These workshops are gaining momentum in all our regions.

None of these great initiatives and programs would be possible without our chapter volunteers. Please do not hesitate to contact your local chapter chair, your regional or chapter representative, myself or anyone from our PES Chapters Organization if you have questions, or if you would like to help out!

Mazana Armstrong
Vice President, Chapters
BC Hydro, Burnaby, BC, Canada