My Experience with PES: Friendship, Fun, Technical Knowledge

Allow me to start with thanking you for being a valued PES member. Your contribution makes PES a great society. Whether you are involved in Student Chapter activities, local Chapter activities, conference local organizing committees, Chapter Counsels, Technical Committees, Smart Cities, Smart Grid, Smart Village, and/or other activities that I may have missed, a big THANK YOU for all your hard work and dedication. Because of your efforts, PES is now the fastest growing IEEE society. Like all of us, I am also a PES volunteer and have been involved in many PES activities since I joined the Society in 2006 as a student member. I am writing this article to share my PES experience with you.

I joined PES in 2006 when I moved from Iran to the United States of America to pursue my PhD program in Electrical Engineering. Like some of us who have experienced immigration challenges, I went through that as well, but I wanted to adopt as fast as possible. Being alone with no families around in a country with different culture, language, etc was challenging. Joining PES was a smart decision I made as it allowed me to find good friends. Friends that have always helped and supported me personally and from career development perspective. Of course, I do the same for them.

Because of PES, I have friends from every corner of the world. Friends from Africa, Europe, Asia, America, etc make the world a better place for me. I am sure we all believe in diversity. Having members from different religion, gender, race, etc is what makes PES a welcoming and fun society. Lastly, given the fact that I am so bad at learning new languages (this was a secret until now 😊), through PES, I have learned a lot on different cultures and people’s way of living. To be honest, I tried some of those learnings and results were not so good. For example, when I was visiting Bosnia and Herzegovina, I tried a special bread called Borek. I loved it. After I returned home, I tried making the same bread and the result looked like everything but Borek with a weird taste LOL!

Having Borek in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Hanging out with the PES Governing Board friends

I cannot miss bragging about my Soccer skills, which I continued to practice during some of my PES visits. See below picture that was taken in Costa Rica.

Soccer is Costa Rica is a BIG deal 😊. I gave a PES DLP talk and then it was time to exercise

Besides friendship and fun, through PES, I have been able to learn a ton of technical information on clean energy, transmission and distribution system operation and design, power system planning, etc. PES is home to more than 20 technical, coordinating and standards development committees. If you are not involved in any technical committee or standards development work, I strongly recommend that you join this incredible teamwork. 44% of all published IEEE Standards are from PES. Participating in standards development is extremely informative. I served as the vice chair of the working group that revised the IEEE 1547 Standard for Interconnection and Interoperability of Distributed Energy Resources with Associated Electric Power Systems Interfaces. This was an incredible experience. Imagine yourself being in the room with 200 engineers debating on a particular technical topic. The amount of information you will learn from that meeting cannot be obtained by reading papers and articles for months. Hence, I strongly recommend that you join the technical committees and possibly get involved in the development of standards. The IEES PES website has a list of all 17 PES technical committees. You can request to join your interested committee by contacting the Chair. The contact information is posted on the website that I provided. PES technical committees work to advance the electric power industry through various activities including identifying current and upcoming challenges, standards development and dissemination of important findings. So, don’t miss the opportunity to be part of this great effort.

Annual Dinner- PES Boston Chapter

You may be wondering what PES is doing on industry engagement. Let me say a few words on that. I am sure you will be impressed.

Of course you want to attend all PES conferences but we all know that it is not possible for many reasons like financial, time, etc. Well, do not worry about that anymore. PES is coming to your neighbourhood by hosting local conferences and regional industry workshops. I am sure you know enough about our regular conferences but let me say a few words on the regional industry workshops. These workshops are serving as the best venue for information exchange in a local level. PES has held a few successful regional workshops in the past few years. Local industry executives, engineers, and university students were invited to attend small 1-2 day events where many power system challenges and opportunities were discussed. Contact your region representative on the governing board, if you can form a team of volunteers who are willing to host a regional industry workshop. Here is the list of the governing board members. Please feel free to contact your regional representative.

Lastly, I will wrap up my article by introducing another great initiative that PES is leading. The best time to implement a significant change in the industry is when the policy aligns with the technology deployment. To ensure this alignment, PES has formed a task force, called industry technical support (ITS), to bridge the potential gap between the engineers and the regulators. Under executed MOUs, ITS is collaborating with many international regulatory agencies. This collaboration includes but not limited to providing technical trainings, actively participating in technical events hosted by the regulators, developing technical reports, etc. ITS is willing to expand this support wherever it is needed. So, if the electric energy regulators in your country are looking for some technical support, please contact ITS. These services are global, and you should benefit from this opportunity. You can find more information on the ITS leadership committee on the PES website.

In order to leverage PES membership benefits, ITS is leading the industrial execution of a program, which is called corporate engagement. Through this service, ITS provides additional benefits to industrial organizations that join PES as corporate members. For more information, visit the PES corporate engagement page.

In summary, my experience with PES has been nothing but fun and development. I am positive that you will experience the same.

I hope you enjoyed reading this article. Feel free to reach out to me via email at: babak.enayati@nationalgrid.com or Facebook, or LinkedIn.

I look forward to connecting with you!