On June 21, 2018, Panama UTP PES Student Branch Chapter and Universidad Tecnológica de Panamá celebrated together the first UTP-IEEE PES innovation forum with the title “Panama, future capital of electric cars” at the convention center of City of Knowledge.

The main objective of the forum was to clarify doubts about the operation of the electric cars and answer questions about how the transmission, distribution system and their legislation are going to be changed for integrating this new technology to the country. To do this, we put together experts from local entities, such as electric distribution and transmission companies, car distributors and electric service regulators with international institutions, such as BYD Central America, UN-Environment and The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in different panels of the forum. Effective discussions were held about this new technology and experts shared their experience and opinion on how to face possible new challenges.

This event got about 296 attendees and was recorded and transmitted live on the Facebook page of Ayudinga, a foundation that seeks the democratization of education in Central America. You can watch this recording in the following link (http://bit.ly/Foroae) and more information in the forum Instagram page (https://www.instagram.com/utp_foroae).

Press reviews of the event can be found at

Diego Giscombe
Chair of IEEE UTP PES SB Chapter

Audience
Forum Chair, Omar Rivera, giving an interview to the local press (TV)
From left to right: PES SBC Advisor, Jessica Guevara, PhD.; Forum Chair, Omar Rivera; Forum Treasurer, Yesica Wen; Forum Program Chair, María Franzí; Communications Chair, Daniel Miranda; Forum Chair Advisor, Diego Giscombe
Student Branch Volunteer, Juan Casaboza, leading the panels and discussions during the forum.
Volunteer team from Universidad Tecnológica de Panamá Student Branch