Greetings from Region 4! 

A very special thank you to Mythili Chaganti to her dedication to leading Region 4 over the past few years.  She was awarded the 2014 Outstanding Engineer Award in the Twin Cities chapter in 2014.  She has recently stepped down and passed the torch to the new region representative, Paul Pabst.

Region 4 is comprised of 13 PES chapters, 2 joint PES/IAS chapters, and 3 PES student chapters.  We are also actively trying to grow our region, so if you have an interest in starting your own chapter, please don’t hesitate to reach out to Paul Pabst.

Region 4 is excited to announce that the Twin Cities chapter will be hosting the 2016 ISGT conference!  Jacob Bernhagen is leading this effort as the chair of the chapter, and he is looking for interested parties and companies to be a part of the conference.

Region 4 Updates:

The Twin Cities was the recipient of the runner up for the Outstanding Large Chapter award in 2014, and for good reason!  They have proven to be very involved in the academic community, professional industry, as well as in the technical organization world.  They are the proud leaders that hosted a record 750 attendees at the Minnesota Power Systems Conference in November 2014.  The chapter hosted a well-received two day event called the IEEE Metro Area Workshop, which covered such topics as “The Internet of Things”, power & energy, cyber security, and career development.  In between these major events the chapter held tutorials on ‘Smart Grid and substation automation’, ‘best practices on load testing’, and tours of transformer plants.

The Central Iowa section has been active in the local community, promoting the PES initiative to the younger crowd.  Ed Neller, the current chair of the chapter led a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) presentation at the Iowa State Fair on August 23.

The Central Indiana has had involvement all across the scene this year.  They hosted a short course on Solar Energy, enticing attendees with talks from individuals from Duke Energy, Indianapolis Power and Light, Sims Engineering (a local installer), the state Office of Energy Development chair, and the Electric Power Research Institute.  The group also toured the Indianapolis airport solar facility, which is the largest in the US.

The events throughout the year for the Central Indiana section have included transformer design and ‘Big Data’, and in the future they are looking forward to a tour of the Mid-Continental Independent System Operator (MISO) and a full day technical seminar on power engineering. Longtime leader Earl Hill has announced that he will be passing the torch of chair duties to a young leader in Diana Vasquez, beginning in 2016.

There are many more activities going on in Region 4 so if you or someone you know is looking to get involved there are many happy & eager people in the PES that are ready to welcome you to the team.

PES Chapters:

Arrowhead (Minnesota)
Calumet (Michigan)
Cedar Rapids (Iowa)
Central Illinois
Central Iowa
Chicago (Illinois)
Iowa-Illinois
Milw/Madison/NE Wisc
Missouri Slope
Nebraska
Siouxland (South Dakota)
Toledo (Ohio)
Twin Cities (Minnesota)

Joint PES/IAS Chapters:

Central Indiana
Southeastern Michigan

PES Student Branch Chapters:

Michigan Technological University
University of Illinois
University of Nebraska