IEEE Power & Energy Society

Young Professionals

Upcoming Webinar: October 1, 2015 12.30 PM (EST)

The PES YP Webinar Series continues on October 1st with a talk provided by Biren Patel titled:  “DC Solar Plant Design Basics”. Biren Patel is an Electrical Engineer and Project Manager with ten years of industry experience and is the owner of Biren Patel Engineering (BPE), a design firm specializing in Substations and Solar Plant engineering. Further details and registration can be found here:

http://www.ieee-pes.org/webinar-young-professionals-dc-solar-plant-design-basics

Abstract:

Utility engineers today deal with an increasing number of solar plant interconnection requests. While most are familiar with the AC behavior of these plants, many are not involved at the DC level. This presentation will explore basic design considerations on the developer side of the Point of Interconnection (POI), such as site layout, tilt options, modules, DC conductors, and inverters.

Webinar Series – Archives

“The road to becoming a professional engineer” by Kevin Maynard

Kevin is a technical leader for Eaton Corporation and a professional engineer licensed in six states.  Read More about Kevin.

“ABCs of EV”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MISdzFWCwBM

IEEE Community Solutions Initiative – Open Source Energy Solutions For Energy Deprived Consumers

Presented by Dr. Robin Podmore, PES VP of New Initiatives & Outreach

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYPLHffXR7Q&list=UUPdq3gqJ1e9GvwFx9ThbuoA

The IEEE Community Solutions Initiative (CSI) has the ambitious goal of bringing reliable electricity to support light, communications, education and jobs for millions of the world’s most energy deprived people.

The webinar covered:

• Examples of IEEE CSI entrepreneurs who are successfully operating Solar Community Charging Stations in Haiti, South Sudan, Nigeria and Cameroon.
• How Seattle University and Seattle Area PES engineers cooperated with EWB to launch projects Zambia and Kenya.
• CSI business model including, financing and revenue practices, standard open hardware designs and open shared business practices.
• Services that IEEE CSI can provide as needed to CSI entrepreneurs – financing, technical support, marketing, fund raising, accounting, legal, web design etc. and opportunities for volunteers.
• Outline of the training program and skills needed for CSI entrepreneurs.
• Special efforts that CSI is making to encourage women entrepreneurs to participate as entrepreneurs and owners in the program.

For more information on CSI see www.communitysolutionsinitiative.org

The Presenter:

Robin Podmore received his Bachelors and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from University of Canterbury, New Zealand in 1968 and 1973. From 1974 to 1978 he managed the Power Systems Research group at Systems Control (now ABB) in Palo Alto, CA. From 1979 to 1990 he was a director and founder of ESCA Corporation now Alstom Grid.

Since 1990 he has been founder and president of IncSys. He has more than 40 years of managerial and technical experience in the development and implementation of power industry computer applications. For more than twenty years he has been working on making Operator Training Simulators affordable, available and usable for all power system operators. The PowerSimulator product developed by IncSys and PowerData has been used to train system operators with more than 150 NERC registered Reliability Coordinators, Transmission Operators and Balancing Authorities.  During 2008 through 2011, with sponsorship of the US Department of State he worked with and trained the trainers for the Ministry of Electricity Real-time engineers in Baghdad, Iraq and witnessed a dramatic decrease in the frequency of system wide blackouts.

For the last three years he has been working with Ray Larsen as Co-Chair of the IEEE Community Solutions Initiative to provide affordable energy for the world’s poorest. In January 2012 he was appointed as Vice President of New Initiatives and Outreach for the IEEE Power and Energy Society.

In 2009, with support from a DOE Smart Grid Workforce Training Award Dr. Podmore founded the Power4Vets program for recruiting, training, certifying and placing military veterans as power system operators.

He is a Fellow of the IEEE Power Engineering Society and a registered Professional Engineer in the State of California. In February 2013 Dr. Podmore was nominated to the National Academy of Engineers for development of modeling and simulation tools for power system operation.

“IEEE PES has been like a family to me. During my research in New Zealand the PES Power  Apparatus and Systems Journal and the Proceedings of the Power Industry Computer Applications Conference were the foundation for my research and source for my future mentors and co-workers. My “real job” is training power system operators using simulation to keep the lights on in the developed world. My “hobby and passion” is helping entrepreneurs bring light and electricity to the world’s poorest for the first time. IEEE and PES can give you opportunities and experiences that are beyond your imagination.”