By Costas Vournas
Region 8 Representative

Dear PES eNewsletter readers,

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAGreetings from the Region 8 Representative to the PES Governing Board!  This year was very active for PES in Region 8 with several events taking place throughout the vast geographical Region encompassing Europe, Africa, and the Middle-East.

In Europe we had the Power Tech Conference held in Grenoble, France from 16-20 June 2013 chaired by Prof. Nouredine Hadjsaid of ENP, Grenoble. The Grenoble Power Tech is the 10th of the series that started in Athens, Greece in 1993 and is now the anchor PES Conference in Europe. Grenoble Power Tech had an impressive attendance of 680 registering participants, not counting the organizers, sponsors and exhibitors. For the first time, a Session with accepted PES Transactions papers was organized in the Power Tech. This practice will be followed also in future Power Techs (next one is in 2015 in Eindhoven, Netherlands), and it is a chance to attract high-quality papers and organize sessions on hot topical subjects.

PES President, Noel Schultz, and other PES Officers attended the Power Tech and participated in various events, such as the Women in Power lunch on June 19. We also held in Grenoble a Chapter Chairs Meeting and Training Session on Sunday June 16, just before the Power Tech, attended by 13 Chapter Chairs and Representatives from Region 8. Special Student activities were carefully planned by the organizers for the 204 student registered in Grenoble Power Tech. Student program included social events, a Job Fair and the Basil Papadias Award, given to the best student paper presented in the Conference. The 2013 winner, Mr. Reza Razzaghi, PhD student at EPFL (Lausanne), received a plaque, 1000 euros and a mini-ipad, whereas the four finalists of the award received a certificate and a mini-ipad each.

Still in the geographical area of Europe, a second important series of Conferences is the Innovative Smart Grid Technologies (ISGT). ISGT-Europe started in 2010 in Gothenburg, Sweden, and is held annually since. Last two Conferences were held in Manchester and Berlin, and the 4th one is scheduled this month in Copenhagen, Denmark from October 6-10.

For more information the ISGT-Europe 2013 please visit the web site http://www.ieee-isgt-2013.eu/

ISGT events are organized by PES in several parts of the World. In Region 8 we already had a Middle-East ISGT held in Saudi Arabia in 2011 and we are now looking forward to a future event in this area in the next years.

In the African continent, PES has many members and is still working towards organizing new PES Chapters. Many volunteers are also working in several Community Solutions Initiatives, or CSI providing energy solutions to the world’s poorest communities. Further information on CSI can be found in their web page:  http://communitysolutionsinitiative.org/

In the North of Africa we have some active PES Chapters, such as the one in Tunisia, which organized a successful International Conference on Renewable Energies and Vehicular Technology (REVET) in March 2012, technically co-sponsored by PES, and is now preparing to host a second Conference, also technically co-sponsored by PES, that will be the International Conference on Green Energy (ICGE) to be held March 25-27, 2014 at the Technopole in Sfax, Tunisia (http://www.icge.aiem-tn.org).

One important activity PES is about to launch, is the extension of the Scholarship+ Program (already very successful in North America) to the other Regions, and in particular to Region 8. This is a challenging task, since within Region 8 we have a vast variety of educational systems and obviously very different needs. The Scholarship+ Program provides scholarships to deserving undergraduate student wishing to follow a Power Engineering Curriculum. Scholars are selected through a rigorous process by selection committees. Each scholarship lasts up to three years for a maximum of 7000 USD overall. The program is based to a large extent on Sponsorship and donations by the Industry and was originally aimed in increasing the number of power engineering undergraduate students, as an answer to the concerns of a decreasing number of young power engineers to replace the older generation of professionals, gradually retiring. Similar needs exist within Region 8, together with several other concerns including the lack of means in certain areas, as well as the unstable financial and civic environment in some others. For all these reasons we are trying to set forward a flexible scheme, where each Chapter within our Region will be able to choose from a number of available options/models of Scholarship+ Program the one that best suits its needs. A Region 8 Scholarship+ Committee will be formed soon to further organize these activities within our Region.

Please allow me to repeat some more information on the organization of PES in Region 8, for those readers that are not familiar with our structure. In Region 8 we have 45 PES Chapters and close to 4500 active PES members. Our Region is subdivided into 5 Areas, each of which is coordinated by a Chapter Representative, who helps organize PES activities of the Chapters in each area. The 5 areas are:

  1. Western Europe coordinated by Dirk Van Hertem from Belgium (KUL, Leuwen), e-mail: dirk.vanhertem@esat.kuleuven.be
  2. Central-North Europe whose Chapter Representative is Igor Kuzle from Croatia (University of Zagreb), e-mail: Igor.Kuzle@fer.hr
  3. Eastern-South Europe represented by Tasos Bakirtzis (University of Thessaloniki, Greece), e-mail: bakiana@eng.auth.gr
  4. Middle-East and North Africa coordinated by Bander Allaf from Saudi Arabia, (ACWA Power International), e-mail: bander@ieee.org
  5. Africa, represented by Pat Naidoo of South Africa, e-mail: pat@patnaidoo.co.za

I am greatly indebted to the five Chapter representatives for their help in coordinating their respective areas, as well as to Ms. Meliha Selak, PES Vice President for Chapters stepping down at the end of this year, for her ample guidance and great help and encouragement.

Local PES Chapters are responsible for organizing events such as lectures and seminars, local and international conferences, and also give out awards to their distinguished members. One such award is the Chapter Outstanding Engineer Award that can be given once every year. Chapters also receive awards, such as the Small and Large Outstanding Chapter Award, as well as the High Performing Chapter Award, the Membership Growth Contest and the Chapter Website Award. For more information on PES Chapter Awards please contact  Ed C. Carlsen, Chairman, PES Chapter Awards and Resources Committee, e-mail: eccarlse@southernco.com

Please feel free to contact me, or the Chapter Representative of your area on any concern you may have regarding PES activities in Region 8.

All the best,
Costas Vournas
Professor NTUA
PES Region 8 Representative
Vournas@power.ece.ntua.gr