From: Frank Lambert, PES Vice President Chapters; Meliha Selak, PES Long Range Planning (LRP) Committee; Danijel Topic, PES Student Chapters Coordinator

The second edition of IEEE PES Student Congress was successfully held on 15-17 of August 2016 at RHR Hotel, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.   The event was attended by 70 participants representing IEEE PES Student Branches from 25 Countries.   The goal of the event was to bring together PES student volunteers to improve their technical skills and to expand their professional network.  It was also a valuable opportunity for PES volunteers to exchange their ideas and experience in organizing and managing PES activities.

The IEEE PES Malaysia PES Chapter collaborated with Industry (Tenaga Nastional Berhad, SHER Engineering and Consultancy), Professional Societies (Institute of Engineers Malaysia Electrical Engineering Technical Division, Institute of Engineering and Technology MNC CIGRE), Academia (Universiti Tenaga National, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Universiti Teknologi Mara, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia) and Government Agencies (Malaysia Convention & Exhibition Bureau, Tourism Malaysia and the Ministry of Tourism and Culture) to organize the congress.

Attendees had a chance to meet, discuss and collaborate on various topics of interest specifically in the area of Renewable energy, Electricity Generation, Transmission, Distributed Generation Energy Efficiency, Smart Grid and any new emerging technology in the Power & Energy Industry.  Additionally, each of the student branch chapters presented a poster highlighting the past and future activities of their student branch chapter.  You can view the posters presented on this google drive.

Attendees were very pleased with the event with 91% indicating that they were satisfied or very satisfied with the event.   Attendees indicated that they will implement the suggestions/best practices discussed from other student branch chapters at their school.  Additionally, attendees discussed the establishment of a local student branch congress within a country (ies), using the technical knowledge gained from congress for a final year project and starting a community based project.  The attendees would like to see the program expanded to have to more interactive sessions/workshops. Feedback from this event will be used as PES plans to conduct the next PES Student Branch Congress.

You can view the complete report with pictures on the 2016 PES Student Congress on the PES website.

2017 IEEE PES Student Congress for USA & Canada

PES is current accepting invites interested non-profits to submit a proposal to host the 2017 IEEE PES Student Congress for the US and Canada covering Regions 1 through 7. Each proposal should contain at least:

• suggested congress dates in 2017,
• descriptions of the proposed venue(s),
• information about the proposed host/co-sponsor
• the individuals to serve as key members of the organizing committee,
• and agreements regarding specific PES Student Congress hosting requirements

More information is available in the call for proposal document