Region 5 is comprised of 23 chapters, and 4 student chapters.  These are Arkansas, Central Texas San Antonio, Central Texas Austin, Corpus Christi , Corpus Christi Rio Grande, Dallas, Denver, Fort Worth (FW), Fort Worth – Glen Rose, Galveston Bay, High Plains, Houston, Kansas City, Lafayette, New Orleans, Oklahoma City, Panhandle, Pikes Peak, Saint Louis, Shreveport, South Plains, Tulsa, and Wichita. There are 6 sections in Region 5 that do not have a PES chapter but have the potential to form new one, including SW Missouri, Baton Rouge, Beaumont, Ozark, Arkansas River Valley and El Paso.

IEEE PES Region 5 Highlights

Four chapters were formed or reinstated in 2017! They are Fort Worth – Glen Rose, Dallas, Saint Louis and Baton Rouge student branch at LSU. Congratulations to them!

Representatives from 13 Chapters in Region 5 joined the chapter officer training with others during the PES General Meeting in Chicago in July and received a lot of good information.  If you are interested in getting more involved with IEEE PES, there are numerous opportunities where you can volunteer. As an IEEE volunteer, you can take pride in participating in activities that interest you, while expanding your knowledge of IEEE, gaining valuable management and leadership skills, and connecting with others in your profession. Please contact me or your local PES chapter officers for more information.

The IEEE PES Joint Technical Committee Meeting and the transformers committee meeting were held in New Orleans in 2017. New Orleans PES Chapter also hosted meetings on Communication and Recent Advances in Solar Energy Systems, Potential Power System Impacts of Geomagnetic Disturbances and High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulses and a short course on Utility Scale Transformer Design, Manufacturing, Testing and Specification.

Central Texas San Antonio PES chapter meets at 6pm on the fourth Thursday of each month except November and December. They have covered topics about Engineering Ethics, Grid of the future for San Antonio, CPS Energy Open House Martinez Substation Project, etc.

Central Texas Austin joint Chapter hosted thirteen technical meetings, one workshop and one social event at Idle Vine Brewery. Technical and workshop topics include Remote Control & Monitoring of Electric Utility Systems, Life at the edge: Operating and designing a whole home residential microgrid, Nuclear Industry and Fukushima Aftermath, Towards Perfect Power Quality: Concepts, Root Causes, and Solutions, Fast, Small, Efficient: The Series Capacitor Buck Converter, The Mats Järlström case: Engineering Ethics, Communicating with Your Valentine and Your Boss, NEC workshop, etc. They have a semi-monthly newsletter where you can sign up via this link http://eepurl.com/bRiU8z if interested.

Fort Worth PES Chapter meets on the second or third Tuesday of the month at 11:30am. They hosted eight meetings this year which covered topics on DG Interconnection with Customers and Various Utilities, Advanced Distribution Management Systems, Distributed monitoring of HVAC systems and the impact on modern power grids, Energy Storage Application in the Distribution System, Applications of Protective Relays in Power Systems, etc.

Communication is a key to the region success. We have held 2 webex with chapter officers to share of ideas, experiences and resources among the region chapters.  This will help those who are just venturing in the chapter leadership and make the process much easier. There will be another webex coming up which will focus on year end activities.

Cat Wong
IEEE PES Region 5 Representative
Email: catwong@ieee.org