PES Day 2020: Multimedia Univ. SB Chapter of Malaysia
Webinar-01: Electric Energy: Harvest Strategies for Electric Motor System in Industry
PES Multimedia University, Malaysia organized webinar series for PES Day 2020. The first webinar was held on 23 April 2020. Number of registered participants was 111 from over 10 different countries with 23 IEEE PES members. During the online session there were 64 attendees. The speaker of the webinar was Ir. Gobbi Ramasamy, Associate Professor, Multimedia University, Malaysia. The title of the talk was “Electric Energy: Harvest Strategies for Electric Motor System in Industry.
Speaker of Webinar-01: Ir. Gobbi Ramasamy
In industries, at least 50% of electric energy is consumed by electric motor systems. Harvest strategy is a business plan for either cancelling or reducing spending on a system. In the case of electric motor system, it is important to reduce the energy usage without compromising on production rate, in other word, to reduce the specific energy for the company. Since electric energy is getting costly, industries are looking for ways to improve the efficiency of the motor system while maintaining the production output. For this reason, high efficiency motors (HEMs) were developed besides advanced power electronics drives system, such as variable frequency drive (VFD). However, the inclusion of the HEMs and the VFD system may not help to reduce energy cost instead may contribute for more wastages and/or much longer payback period. In his talk, speaker discussed several case studies on harvest strategies employed for electric motor system. In Malaysia, more than 85% of the motors are at least 15 years old. Many of them have gone through rewinding process for at least 3 times. In business terms, these motors are called cash cow, which refers to a system that makes a profit in a mature market and does not need heavy reinvestment. Meaning even if they invest on this motor system, there is no improvement in their product and profit margin. Hence, at this point, harvest strategy is an option. In the webinar, the dos and don’ts in managing energy in electric motor systems were explained. The event lasted 1.5 hours including a Q&A session. The participants were very interactive with great feedback received.
Speaker during the online webinar-01
Webinar-02: Battery Storage Technologies & Their Potential Applications in the Power Systems
PES Multimedia University, Malaysia organized another webinar for PES Day 2020 on 11 May 2020. Number of registered participants was 150 from over 10 different countries with 40 IEEE PES members. During the online session there were 85 attendees. The speaker of the webinar was Dr. Wei-Jen Lee, Professor and Director, The University of Texas at Arlington and President Elect, IEEE Industry Application Society (IAS).
Speaker of Webinar-02: Prof. Dr. Wei-Jen Lee, President Elect, IEEE IAS
The webinar presented to Smart Grid users a clearer picture of the state-of-the-art electrochemical technologies available, and where they would be suited for integration into a power generation and distribution system. Electrical power infrastructures are changing dramatically around the globe due to smart grid initiatives, the establishment of renewables and the resulting distributed nature of creating electricity, the need for independent microgrids to ensure grid reliability, new demands from end users, the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as well as the capability to accommodate mixed energy resources. As a result, the power network faces great challenges in generation, transmission and distribution to meet new and many times unpredictable demands of providing coherent electricity supply. Battery Energy Storage (BES) has been considered a game-changer with a number of technologies that have great potential in meeting these challenges. However, the wide variety of options and complex performance matrices can make it difficult to appraise specific BES technology for particular applications. A detailed discussion was made in the webinar on BES technologies and their potential applications in the power systems.
Mohammed Hussein Saleh Mohammed Haram
PES DAY Ambassadors
Chair, IEEE PES Multimedia University SB Chapter