National Capital Region Highlights

Saifur Rahman chairs IEEE smart grid conference

Photo by Avijit Saha Saifur Rahman served

as general chair

Virginia Tech played a key role in organizing the Sixth Conference on Innovative Smart Grid Technologies (ISGT) 2015 sponsored by the IEEE Power & Energy Society (PES). Saifur Rahman, the Joseph R. Loring Professor of Engineering, and director of the Virginia Tech Advanced Research Institute (ARI), served as general chair for the three-day event held in Washington, D.C., last week.

Themed Smart Grid  Present and Future, the conference focused on the future migration path for the smart grid as new and emerging technologies converge with power system developments to create smart energy systems.

I was privileged to welcome hundreds of smart grid practitioners, business executives, industry professionals, researchers, policy makers, engineering students, and faculty members to the IEEE conference where we had many meaningful discussions on ground-breaking innovations in smart grid technologies happening around the world, said Rahman.

George Arnold, chief executive officer, Tercio Solutions, Cambridge, Massachusetts, served as technical program chair. The technical program of IEEE ISGT 2015 was built on more than five years of progress in smart grid deployment accelerated by the U.S. Department of Energys Smart Grid Investment Grants and looked ahead to explore how ongoing technology developments will shape the future evolution of the grid.

Rahman said that more than 300 technical papers were submitted for the 2015 conference and fewer than 160 of them (representing more than 20 countries) were accepted.

We brought in a diverse group of experts from government, industry, academia, and the non-governmental organization community for three plenary sessions, 24 parallel panel sessions, and 17 paper and poster sessions over the three days of the conference, he said.

Tutorials by international experts on smart grid applications were also available to participants.

Photo by Avijit Saha Joseph Paladino was among

the keynote speakers

Among the keynote speakers were Amy Ericson, president, Alstom USA; Joseph Paladino, senior advisor, Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, U.S. Department of Energy; and Harold DePriest, president, Chattanooga Electric Power Board.

In addition to chairing the conference, Rahman spoke at the plenary panel session, Smart Grid Evolution - Technology, Policy and Regulation, and on the panel, Transaction-Based Control.

Virgilio Centeno, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering on Virginia Techs main campus, spoke on the panel, Improving Reliability with Smart Grid Analytics  Part I. This panel discussed applications of smart grid analytics technologies to detect degradation and predict impending failures at both the equipment and system levels, thus allowing utilities to be more proactive, enabling more efficient maintenance, lower costs, and increased availability.

Photo by Warodom Khamphanchai Panelist Becky Harrison, CEO,

Gridwise Alliance addresses the group

Manisa Pipattanasomporn, associate professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, ARI, served as the local organizing chair for the conference, assembling a group to ensure that all of the physical logistics at the conference site, including audio/visual, were handled professionally. Her team included Murat Kuzlu, assistant professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, ARI; Yonael Teklu, energy systems and IT specialist, ARI; and eight Ph.D. students in Electrical and Computer Engineering at ARI.

In addition to the students being such a great help, the conference was an excellent learning experience for them as each was assigned to the sessions that were of most interest and relevance to their areas of study and research, said Pipattanasomporn. She said that an email from IEEE event planner Carmen-Alyce noted that the team was a huge help onsite and I heard numerous times how our attendees appreciated their visibility and eagerness to assist in any way possible.

On Feb. 16, the day before the conference, Smart Grid News published an interview with Rahman about the conference and smart grid research at Virginia Tech.

High visibility at the IEEE smart grid conference and in publications like this are important because it helps to position Virginia Tech as a leader in this field, Rahman noted.

Photo by Avijit Saha

Left to right: Ph.D. students Adelaja Arojuraye, Warodom Khamphanchai, Avijit Saha, Kruthika Rathinavel, Desing Bian, Hamideh Bitaraf, Shibani Ghosh. (Not pictured is student Fakeha Sehar.) Manisa Pipattanasomporn, Saifur Rahman and Murat Kuzlu are at center and Yonael Teklu at far right.

Posted February 25, 2015