IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2016 - 123

✔ PeS members now enjoy unfet-

tered access to the Ieee PeS
resource center, an online repository of technical reports, tutorials,
conference presentations, videos,
and other resources.
✔ In late 2014, Ieee PeS and
Ieee-uSA delivered the first
Quadrennial energy review, a
report on six critical areas in
north America's electric power
system, requested by u.S. President barack obama and the u.S.
department of energy.
✔ PeS careers, a free online service
to connect students with employers in the power industry, has, to
date, assisted 1,500 students and
300 employers in the united
States, canada, the emeA region
(europe, middle east, Africa), and
Australia, and its focus is expanding to include mexico, Latin America, South America, Asia/Pacific,
and, next year, china.
✔ the PeS Scholarship Plus Initiative, which focuses on workforce development in the united
States, canada, and Puerto rico,
is making progress and needs
continuing support.
✔ And progress on the PeS technical committee reorganization
would be presented in multiple
town hall meetings at the General meeting in denver.
other plenar y session speakers presented ideas that are driving
the power industry, which were both
visionary and pragmatic, global and
local in nature.
dan Arvizu, director of the national
renewable energy Laboratory (nreL)
in nearby Golden, colorado, spoke to
nreL's role in moving proven concepts to the private-sector marketplace,
and he emphasized the importance of
capital markets in funding the transition
to a cleaner power generation portfolio.
mark mcGranahan, vice president
of power delivery and utilization at
the electric Power research Institute,
spoke to "the challenge of integrating the customer" and suggested that

january/february 2016

The poster session was a time to learn from each other.

"there couldn't be a better time for
[power] engineers" as "the challenges
are the same all around the world."
Picking up on that theme, david Sun,
chief scientist at Alstom Grid, told the
audience that they had to look beyond
technical, electrical factors to "the
human factor."
"I am a customer,"
Sun said, pausing for
impact. "I want to be
served. I'm no longer
a passive consumer of
kilowatt hours. I have
choices. those choices
challenge our industry.
And they bring incredible opportunities. We
are evolving from costbased to value-based
services ... and each
of us must be passionate as we contribute to
an intelligent energy
ecosystem."
but attendees were also reminded
that "keeping the lights on"-and
maintaining affordable service-during a historic period of industry transformation is just as important as a
forward-looking vision of the future.
Joel bladow, senior vice president of
transmission for tri-State Generation

and transmission Association, Inc.,
provided a reality check with his talk,
"rural t."
"Smart grid in the city is one thing,"
bladow said. "can that model be
applied to rural America, in an affordable, reliable way?"
one challenge will
be to reconcile distributed energy resources
with
utility-scale,
centralized renewable
resources, bladow suggested. With that challenge in mind, he'd
remain a "Show-me
missourian," he said.
With the plenary
session over, attendees
moved swiftly to a weeklong
smorgasbord
of technical sessions,
membership
meetings, networking and
receptions. And, according to the statistics reported on in
denver, many attendees already are
planning to travel for the next PeS General meeting in boston, massachusetts,
18-21 July 2016.

Many attendees
already are
planning
to travel for
the next PES
General Meeting
in Boston,
Massachusetts,
18-21 July 2016.

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2016