IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2018 - 8

letters to the editor

share your thoughts
send comments to mih.psat@gmail.com

READERS ARE ENCOURAGED TO
share their views on issues affecting the
electric power engineering profession.
Send your letters via e-mail to Michael
Henderson, editor-in-chief, mih.psat@gmail
.com. Letters may be edited for publication.

Real-World Engineering
I was fascinated to read the article in the
"History" column by Andrew Isaacs,
"Simulation Technology," in the July/
August 2017 issue of IEEE Power &
Energy Magazine (vol. 15, no. 4, pp.
88-102). One part of the article speaks
directly to how engineering works in the
"real world" and may deserve expansion
and dissemination into the secondary
school environment.
The section that caught my eye begins on p. 98, "Can It Simulate HVdc?"
In summary, simulation engineers were
challenged to analyze a transmission
system using an advanced model with
the best estimates of the parameters of
the physical system. The simulation was
unable to replicate an observed failure in
the physical system, and so the engineers
assembled a task force to find out why.
They discovered that one of the input parameters to the model was incorrect, and
when it was corrected, they observed that
the model successfully replicated the
failure. Realizing that this parameter in
the physical system might be the cause of
the failure, they worked backward from

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPE.2017.2769519
Date of publication: 5 January 2018

ieee power & energy magazine

This is an
important
scenario to
communicate
to educators
because it is
an example of
several features
of real-world
engineering.

the model and made a
change to the physical
system that correlated
to the model's faulty
input parameter. This
resolved the problem in
the physical system.
This is an important scenario to communicate to educators
because it is an example
of several features of
real-world engineering.
The physical system had
a problem. A model was
developed to simulate
the physical system. The
model did not work. A tiger team was assembled. The model
was changed. The problem was resolved.
This series of events "rings true" to my engineering experience.
And this real-world example contrasts
with the theoretical view of engineering,
where somebody provides a clear set of
requirements that lead, in linear fashion,
to a product. The story here might be a
good candidate for the eventual addition
to a secondary school STEM or science
curriculum as an example of how engineering really happens. It has a bit of an
adventurous flavor!
-Douglas Hagerman

Storing Energy
I read with great interest the September/October 2017 issue of IEEE Power
& Energy Magazine (vol. 15, no. 5), and

congratulations on an
issue devoted to electric
energy storage
The article "GridLevel Application of
Electrical Energy Storage" (by Zhang et al. on
pp. 51-58) was of significant interest. As an
electric power system
engineer, working with
pumped storage hydro,
I would like to comment that, since the mid
1990s, the international
fleet of pumped storage plants now includes
a growing number of
plants with adjustable speed doubly
fed induction machines motor/generators, line commutated converter fed synchronous machines, and ternary pumped
storage units.
-Peter Donalek

Editor's Response
Interested readers can avail themselves
of additional information about gridscale, hydro-based storage in the report
"Modeling and Analysis of Value of Advanced Pumped Storage Hydropower
in the United States," which is available
at the following web site: http://ceeesa
.es.anl.gov/projects/psh/ANL-DIS-14-7_
Advanced_PSH_Final_Report.pdf.
p&e

january/february 2018

http://ceeesa.es.anl.gov/projects/psh/ANL-DIS-14-7_Advanced_PSH_Final_report.pdf http://ceeesa.es.anl.gov/projects/psh/ANL-DIS-14-7_Advanced_PSH_Final_report.pdf http://ceeesa.es.anl.gov/projects/psh/ANL-DIS-14-7_Advanced_PSH_Final_report.pdf

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