IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2018 - 10

leader's corner

As the Ieee Power & energy
society (Pes) president for 2018 and
2019, I would like to share with you
where we are and where we plan to go
as the largest global professional society of power engineers. Currently, we
have over 37,500 members in our society, from 150 countries. this makes
Pes the second largest society in the
Ieee behind the Ieee Computer society. however, in Latin America (region 9), Pes has the most members
among all Ieee societies.
we are not only global, we are also
local. our connections at the local
level are our Chapters, which provide
our grassroots contacts. Pes now has
251 Chapters and 298 student Branch
Chapters in almost all the countries in
which we operate. the student-run
Chapters had phenomenal growth,
rising from 134 in 2014 to close to 300
in just three years. our Pes Chapters
are a great way to plug in to the society in most parts of the world and get
involved. our local Chapters can provide networking opportunities to help
grow your career, leadership development opportunities, mentoring for our
Pes student Branches, tutorials and
professional development courses, Distinguished Lecturer presentations, and
a host of other benefits.
Pes is also focused on public service,
working with national governments to
contribute technical support for policy
development. For example, we worked
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPE.2017.2759881
Date of publication: 5 January 2018

ieee power & energy magazine

Saifur Rahman

PES connections
being relevant to the global working professional

with the U.s. Department of energy in
2015 and 2016 and prepared technical
support for their Quadrennial energy
review. Pes has also provided support
to the U.s. Federal energy regulatory
Commission and the north American
electric reliability Corporation. similar
discussions are ongoing with the european Commission. we would be happy
to engage with policy makers in south
America, Asia, and Africa as well.
with about 70% of our members
coming from industry and government,
Pes has by far the highest percentage of
nonacademic members among all Ieee
societies. At the same time, the society
has one of the best participation by academics in our conferences, short courses/
tutorials, journal publications, and member outreach activities.
Pes publishes six technical journals
and two magazines. In addition to hard
copies, all of these periodicals are available online. one of the six journals, IEEE
Power and Energy Technology and Systems Journal, is open access, and papers
are practice oriented. here industry engineers can publish their case studies,
best practices, unique field deployment
experiences, and lessons learned for the
benefit of working engineers, who can
access the material for free.
Pes organizes over 30 conferences
per year in more than 20 countries. our
flagship conference, the Pes general
Meeting, routinely attracts over 3,000
attendees who speak and participate
in panel meetings, paper sessions, and
committee meetings. we are cognizant
that the general Meetings are almost al-

ways held in north America, which limits participation by our members from
other parts of the world. to facilitate
participation by such members, we hold
our Innovative smart grid technologies
Conferences in Latin America, europe,
north America, and the Asia-Pacific
regions every year. we also have many
regional conferences, such as the Powertech Conference in europe, the AsiaPacific Power & energy engineering
Conference, and PowerCon in the AsiaPacific region. we have recently started the annual Power Africa Conference
series in Africa.
Under the leadership of 2016-2017
Pes President Dr. Damir novosel, the
society began focusing more heavily on
corporate engagements. we have set up
executive advisory committees (eACs)
comprising industry executives from
their respective regions. For example,
we now have eACs in place in the United states, Canada, and south America.
similar committees are being formed in
europe/Middle east/Africa and Asia/
oceania. their mission is to provide
strategic support to the Pes governing Board with the goals of helping
to provide more benefits to industry
members, better communicating those
benefits to the membership, and leading efforts to leverage those benefits in
their respective organizations and for
the overall industry.
Pes is deploying significant resources for training and lifelong learning activities for our practicing engineer
members. there are numerous short
courses, webinars, and tutorials-both
january/february 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2018