IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - June 2016 - 8

President's Message

by Braham Ferreira

IEEE PELS Launches
New Initiatives

eturning home from the IEEE
Applied Power Electronics
Conference and Exposition
(APEC) after a hectic week of administrative meetings, I could not help thinking how much has changed in the IEEE
Power Electronics Society (PELS)
since my early involvement. The original flagship conference, the Power
Electronic Specialist Conference
(PESC), was held in my backyard in
Aachen, Germany, in 2004. At that time,
Dean Patterson was the president of
the Society, and I was a member-atlarge. We had one meeting during the
day, which was attended by about 20
people. We put out one publication and
had one external administrator. This
year, at APEC 2016, we began meeting
on a Sunday, one day before the official
start of the conference, with the IEEE
International Future Energy Challenge
Student Competition (IFEC), International Technology Roadmap for WideBandgap (WBG) Power Semiconductor Activity (ITRW), and industry board
meetings, followed by a membership
meeting on Monday morning. Various
steering committee and technical committee meetings continued throughout
the week, ending with the Administrative Committee (AdCom) meeting that
Friday. In short, this year, we needed
six days to attend all the meetings. In
addition, the number of Society publications has grown from one to five, and

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPEL.2016.2550279
Date of publication: 23 June 2016

IEEE POWER ELECTRONICS MAGAZINE

now four IEEE staff members support
PELS. Also, there are now three IEEE
Energy Conversion Congress and
Exposition flagship conferences and
two full AdCom meetings per year.
Over the years, PELS, as well as the
IEEE as a whole, has grown substantially. There is an ongoing discussion
among the IEEE Technical Activities
Board about the changes that should
be made now to best position the IEEE
for success in 2030. Technical meetings and publications are still at the
core of the organization, but the IEEE
is actively seeking ways to improve
its role as a volunteer organization
whose core purpose is to foster technological innovation and excellence
for the benefit of humanity. One way
the IEEE is addressing this challenge
is by introducing the New Initiatives
Program, which is intended to initiate
new programs, products, and services
that will potentially provide significant benefit to members, the technical
community, and the broader public.
Our Society is looking forward,
engaging our members in future-oriented workshops. In the even years,
we do long-range planning at Society
meetings, and in the odd years, we are
brainstorming answers to the question "What does the future hold-and
can technology development be influenced to address important needs?"
Regular readers of IEEE Power Electronics Magazine may have noticed
that recent issues feature articles originating from the Eighth International

z June 2016

Workshop on the Future of Electronic
Power Processing and Conversion
(FEPPCON 2015) held last September.
This year, PELS is going forward with
three initiatives of its own.
1) The next real breakthrough in
power electronics is likely to come
from WBG semiconductor devices.
The ITRW was initiated to accelerate the transition from silicon to
silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium
nitride (GaN).
2) The second initiative is a new workshop in response to the emergence
of power-electronic-based transmission and distribution technology
as a driving force for grid modernization. The first IEEE Workshop on
Electronic Power Transmission and
Distribution (eT&D) will be held on
26 May 2016 in Hefei, China, chaired
by Don Tan and in partnership with
the IEEE Power & Energy Society.
3) At APEC, the AdCom approved
a new three-year initiative project, "Reaching the Global Tipping
Point for Small Renewable Energy
Systems." The goal of this project
is to create a framework to support, enhance, and expedite development of a world technology
platform for small renewable
energy systems (SRES). Solutions
must be globally scalable and easy
to use and maintain.

Transition to WBG Power Devices
Although the step from germanium to
silicon at the dawn of the electronics

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - June 2016