IEEE PES Columbus Chapter and IEEE PES Region 2 organized a PES Distinguished Lecture (webinar) on 13th August 2020. The resected DL for this talk was Mr. John D. McDonald, P.E. from GE Grid Solutions, who is an IEEE Life Fellow, past IEEE PES President, and Vice President of CIGRE US National Committee Technical Activities. The title of the talk was “Big Data, IOT, Data Management For Power Industry”.

This webinar was broadcasted to all IEEE Columbus Section members and all PES Region 2 Chairs. There were over 40 participants actively engaged with the entire webinar on Aug. 13th, through the lecture, polling questions, and Q&A session. The participants consist of utility engineers, consultants, and university professors and students across Region 2.

Our speaker, Mr. John McDonald, gave a very insightful presentation by conveying  an important message of building a Strong Grid (i.e., communication and IT infrastructure) before Smart Grid. During the Q&A session, John reiterated that utility IT experts should be brought into discussions of standardizing the utility data management and analysis, in order to bridge the gap between OT (Operation Technology) and IT. In addition, he emphasized that a successful Internet of Things (IoT) used by a utility will include data observation, integration, analytics and dashboard.

After the webinar, a number of good feedback were received from the participants. IEEE PES Columbus Chapter along with Region 2 will continue setting up these DL webinars through the end of this year to offer Professional Development Hours (PDHs) to our local professionals and communicating the latest trends and technologies from our industry.

Recorded video of the DL talk can be found here.

Dr. Xuan Wu
IEEE PES Columbus Chapter Chair
IEEE PES Region 2 Representative