IEEE Power Electronics Magazine Compendium - March 2018 - 5

Introductory Letter

by Alan Mantooth and Gerard Hurley

commemorating the 30th anniversary
of the Foundation of the
IEEE Power Electronics society

T

he IEEE Power Electronics
Society (PELS) has its origins
in the Power Electronics
Council that was formed in 1983.
Many people with a clear vision of
the need and benefit of a power electronics society worked tirelessly to
make it happen. To quote Trey Burns,
the first Power Electronics Council
president, "We had to start life as a
Council, a group of member Societies rather than individual IEEE Members, because not everyone shared
our vision at that time. Some felt that
'power electronics' was covered adequately in other Societies and that
there was no need for yet another
IEEE Society (Figure 1). Our task
was to convince the Technical Activities Board (TAB) that there were in
fact large numbers of engineers who
were asking for a forum that brought
together those who worked on industrial applications, aerospace applications, or any other application of
power electronics technology to
share ideas and to learn from one
another. A significant effort by a
number of people went into this process, including developing and distributing a survey to thousands of
practicing engineers to gather their
views regarding the need and value
of a new PELS, and countless meetings with other Society leaders and
IEEE TAB executives."
The individuals involved in these
efforts had been involved in the early
conferences related to power electron-

ics. The Power Conditioning Specialists Conference (PCSC), which was
sponsored by the IEEE Aerospace
and Electronics Systems Group, was
held in April 1970. In its third year, the
name of the PCSC was changed to
the IEEE Power Processing and Electronics Specialists Conference, and in
1973, it became the Power Electronics
Specialists Conference (PESC), then
later evolved into the Energy Conversion Congress and Expo (ECCE). The
ECCE global series that now includes
ECCE-North America, ECCE-Europe,
and ECCE-Asia, along with the Applied
Power Electronics Conference, are the
flagship conferences of PELS. All of
this activity eventually led to the establishment of PELS in 1988 under the
leadership of founding president John

G. Kassakian (Figure 2), professor of
electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
For last 30 years, the journey has
been excellent. The Society has made
significant strides in facilitating and
guiding the development and innovation in the power electronics arena.
From starting local Chapters in all
ten IEEE regions of the world and extending the reach of ECCE to Europe
and Asia, PELS was also instrumental
in launching IEEE Transactions on
Power Electronics, IEEE Journal of
Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics, IEEE Transactions on
Transportation Electrification, IEEE
Transactions on Sustainable Energy,
IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics, and
IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid

FIG 1 Trey Burns, the first president of the Power Electronics Council, conducting a
meeting at the 1983 PESC.

IEEE PowEr ElEctronIcs MagazInE

5
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power Electronics Magazine Compendium - March 2018
