Trendspotting: my top takeaways from the IEEE PES 2022 joint technical committee meeting

Every year, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Power & Energy Society (PES)—the world’s largest technical professional organization—sponsors technical committee meetings, conferences and events worldwide. The purpose? To provide a forum where subject matter experts can meet and discuss specific industry topics for the betterment of our society.

IEEE PES has Power System Relaying and Control Committee working groups that come together and develop industry standards, guides, recommended practices and reports. Serving as the Chair of the working group H47 exploring the impact of digital communications on grid protection and control applications, I have the privilege of collaborating on an industry report on digital transformation of power substations. This year, the IEEE committee meeting kicked things off with though-provoking conversations about renewable resources and the consequent impact on grid reliability and the effects of digital communications and security on protection and control applications. To say these piqued my interest would be an understatement.

At present, conventional power sources are stable, but consume a finite amount of resources. While renewable power sources are—for lack of a better word, renewable—they are also unpredictable in supply, smaller in size, and inverter-based. Today’s protection and control architectures are built based on those conventional power sources, but following the global energy shift, will need to be integrated with renewable sources without compromising grid reliability and resilience. Preventing loss of generation, reducing power outages, and reaching net zero without impacting grid reliability will require new modeling, innovative technologies, updated systems, and top-notch expertise. We’re looking for and discussed new ways to model renewable energy power sources and systems so that we can adapt current protection and control designs.

With the constant and expeditious technological developments happening all around us, it’s no surprise that digitization was also on the agenda. We are collectively looking at understanding the challenges and impact of digitizing grid sensors and how digital communications could help in the standardization and convergence of applications at bay level. Once grid sensors are digitized, it is critical to understand what impact that can have on protection and control equipment. Cybersecurity and “future-proofing” these systems is top-of-mind as we build for the grid of the future. After all, grid innovations and modernization are what’s solving the energy transition trilemma that you will hear about in my upcoming blog.