IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - May/June 2017 - 8

leaders' corner

Alan C. Rotz

what's happening at IEEE
how it could impact the Power & Energy Society

This will be my lasT column
in IEEE Power & Energy Magazine as
Division Vii director. i wanted to first
thank all of you for your support and
your efforts since i have been involved
with the ieee Power & energy society (Pes). During my four years as
treasurer, six years as president-elect/
president/past-president, and my current role as Division Vii director, Pes
has accomplished a great deal. and it
would not have happened without the
dedication of volunteers like you. i take
a lot of pride in seeing Pes membership
grow from 22,000 to 37,000 during the
years i've been involved with Pes leadership, and during those same years,
the Pes reserves (think of it as the Pes
savings account) grew from about us$2
million to nearly us$19 million. we
must be doing something right! This
would not have happened without the
selfless actions of all of us working together for the greater good of Pes.
i'd like to devote the rest of this column to sharing what's happening within
Pes and the ieee that could impact our
society and our attempts to continue
growing our membership, maintaining
our financial health, and providing increased member value to all of you.

Industry Outreach
The ieee and Pes both recognize that
staying connected with industry is vital
to our future. Pes seems to have lost
some of that connection over the years,
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPE.2017.2664399
Date of publication: 19 April 2017

ieee power & energy magazine

especially with utilities. and outside of
north america, we do not seem to attract
a significant number of utility members.
both of these need to change, and both
the ieee and Pes are developing new
initiatives to make that happen.
Pes has activities in process on several fronts to increase its outreach and
visibility to industries and utilities, including the following:
✔ The establishment of an execu-
tive advisory council composed of
electric industry senior executives.
The chief goal of this group is to
provide strategic support to Pes
leadership by identifying benefits
that Pes can provide to members
as well as the best ways to communicate those benefits. initiatives
could also include letters to the
editors of targeted media, publishing opinion pieces in target newspapers and magazines, contributing
articles to industry magazines, and
identifying subject matter experts
for commentary on industry trends
and developments.
✔ An initiative to communicate re-
cent standards updates to the
power and energy industry. These
could be presented at major Pes
events but also in regions or companies around the world where
the message would help advertise
the work of Pes and attract members. The current standard most in
demand is ieee 1547, Standard
for Interconnecting Distributed
Resources with Electric Power
Systems, but other topics in de-

mand include surge protection,
lightning stroke shielding, gasinsulated substations, and transmission lines.
✔ Educate PES Chapters on how to
engage local industries in their
events. This could include invitations to those in industry who
are not Pes members, engaging
industry experts as speakers, and
meeting with representatives of
local industries to see what topics
they would like to see presented
at local chapter meetings.
✔ Investigating corporate member-
ships or discounts. corporate memberships could allow a company to
pay a lump sum to the ieee Pes,
which would allow them a given
number of memberships, depending on the fees paid. it could also
allow a company to register a specified number of members for a
Pes conference or meeting at a
group discount.
on the ieee side, an industry outreach ad hoc committee has been working for over two years and will form an
industry advisory board (iab) this year.
in 2016, members of the group and the
ieee board of Directors met with over
270 leaders from 70+ countries from all
over the world, including six countries
in asia, plus the united Kingdom, uruguay, south africa, israel, canada, and the
united states. The iab membership will
be expanded from the current ieee and
staff to include members from industry
served by ieee and possibly even members from groups whose business is similar
may/june 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - May/June 2017