IEEE PES Women in Power Congress in Region 10 - More Power to the Future

12 & 13 September 2020 | Aparajita Goswami

Organizers: WIE Affinity Group, IEEE Bangladesh Section and Women in Power

Date and Time: 12 & 13 September 2020. 4:00 P.M to 8 P.M (GMT+6)

Platform: Zoom

Total Attendees: 281

September 12th, 2020. The day inaugurated with a strong message “More Power to the Future” in a fabulous event of IEEE PES Women in Power Congress in Region 10. It was a great digital event where 281 participants registered from 26 different countries of 6 continents.

Day 1 started with the program vision & brief shared by Prof. Celia Shahnaz (Professor, Dept. of EEE, BUET, Chair, IEEE Bangladesh Section, PES WiP R10 Representative., General Chair, IEEE PES Women in Power Congress in Region 10). 140 participants joined in day 1. She exclaimed to be part of this first ever kind of PES congress with a huge number of accomplished speakers and attendees from all around the world. She added the vision how women can foster the commitment for diversity and inclusion in Power society through more activities in Power sector.

Program host introduced the first key note speaker, Bruno Meyer, RTE, French Electric Transmission System Operator. He stated that only one third of engineers are women whereas global trend in women in power is even less. He shared his experience while he was the head of a department where there were 15 group managers and none of them were female. He then changed the scenario and now there are one third female group leaders and this decision has increased the efficiency and quality of work of the whole department. Bruno Meyer also provided some stats, which show that only 30% of female students come to engineering institutes to pursue their career as an engineer and other meritorious students go to different fields like medical, journalism etc. In short, he emphasized more on woman leadership opportunities in every sector including science and technology.

The next speaker was Vivian Sin Yee Leung, Grid Planning Engineer, CLP Power Hong Kong Limited (CLP). She spoke about the Challenges PES industry is facing in pandemic and possible solutions. She addressed year 2020 as a difficult time as the entire working force had to change their work habits and was introduced to the notion of work from home. So the main challenge for PES industry was to come up with a proper planning to migrate the whole work to cloud system. Besides it was to a challenge to improve the cloud sharing system and developing the app store to promote efficient business operation. Along with these, PES industry obliged to support the community in this pandemic. So they gave extra internship opportunity to the new graduates and provided mask and other health care facilities to the under-privileged people of Hong Kong.

After that, Dr Shama Naz Islam , Senior Lecturer, Electrical Engineering at Deakin University, Australia- delivered her presentation on “Communication Technologies for Peer-to-Peer Energy Trading in a Micro grid”. She showed a model how P2P energy trading works in a micro grid. She also showed the importance of optimum energy management and statistical data of optimum energy trading. She also emphasized on the exchange of information to ensure optimum energy management and pointed that information exchange needs to have low latency and high reliability.

Next came Nirmal-Kumar C. Nair, Associate Professor in Electrical, Computer, and Software Engineering at University of Auckland, Chair, R10 Professional Activities Committee. His topic of presentation was “Unconscious bias, Diversity, Inclusion, Visibility and Leadership: Through the lens of an IEEE long-standing member.” In his speech, Mr. Nair discussed different types of biases. He also stated the pledge of IEEE WIP, which is -not to have same sex panel in future. This pledge will help them to ensure diversity and participation of both male and female panel members in any discussion.

Later on, Lakshita, a Doctoral Candidate under Nirmal Kumar C. Nair, Power System Group, Electrical, Computer and Software Engineering University of Auckland, New Zealand, presented on Power System Resilience Challenges & Strategies along with the IEEE PES Activities in New Zealand North Section. There she showed the threats of power system and a risk management framework in enhancing the reliance of power system.

Afterwards speech was delivered by special guest: Dr. S N Singh, Vice Chair, R10 Technical Activities, Chair, IEEE India Council. As a key note speaker, he told that Power Engineering Society is one of the largest and oldest societies which have a wide and diverse working platform as it is attracting all the other sectors of engineering, mathematics, and even economics. He addressed this society as a highly accommodative society. He also expressed his concern on the declining women contribution in the field of electronics in his speech.

Another special guest was Dr. Roumei Li, Chair of Women in Power (WIP), Chair of IEEE PES, WIP Liaison in IEEE WIP, member of LRP in PES--Strategy of IEEE PES WIP, 2020-2021. In her speech, she shared the vision of WIP committee, along with the structure and members of this society. She also focused on the benefits of joining WIP activities and the procedure of joining the PES WIP.

After the speech of Dr. Roumei Li, the Chief Guest: Dr. Jessica Bian, Vice President, Grid Services, Grid-X Partners, IEEE PES President-Elect (2020-2021), inaugurated the IEEE PES Women in Power Congress in Region 10. In her inauguration speech, she shared the mission, goals and functions of IEEE PES WIP. She also assured that this platform is not only for the women, everyone can join it. She also shared the future grids of this society and introduced the technical committee and additional student programs of the society.

The next speaker was Dr. G. Bhuvaneshwari, Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Delhi, IEEE Fellow. She delivered her speech on ‘Emerging areas in Power Engineering’. She focused on attaining sustainable energy and to achieve that she advised to promote inter disciplinary work culture where professionals from different fields have to work together in relative area with the sense of belonging and with the understanding of own domain as well as appreciation for the experts of other domains.

Zhiqian Bo, Honorary Dean, School of Electrical Engineering, Changsha University of Science and Technology, China shared his thoughts over ‘Support the development of IEEE PES WIP in China.’ Major role was to establish IEEE PES in China in 2018 under the supervision of Prof. Remei Li which has great impact on engineers in this sector and set examples for other countries. He expected more engagement and best wishes from others to develop women in power in China.

Dr Yu Juan, Professor, Chongqing University, Deputy Director, Center for Electric Power and Energy Reliability Research, Chongqing University, IEEE Senior member, presented the “Introduction to IEEE PES composite System Reliability task force” after the inauguration speech of Dr. Jessica Bian. In her presentation she focused on the background of her study and stated that satisfying the requirements of national grid development is the main goal of her research. She also showed a research framework and key points in dealing with real time and accurate operational management.

The last speaker of day 1 was Dr. Chandrasekhar Reddy Atla, Principal Engineer, PRDC. He had a presentation on the Impact on EVs on Local Distribution System. He showed different electrical vehicle charging technologies, structure of EV charger with digital control system, impact of EV charging on the grid and some simulation studies for sample feeders. He also stated that there should be a proactive plan to overcome new initiatives which will collaborate with state policy, problems and planning.

Prof. Shaikh Fattah shared shortly how PES e-News update can be utilized as a platform to recognize all contributors. Day 1 was closed with the hope to get more insight from other renowned speakers on the following day.

Snaps from Day 1:

Day 2 started with the welcome speech by Prof. Celia Shahnaz, Professor, Dept. of EEE, BUET,Chair, IEEE Bangladesh Section,PES WiP R10 Representative,General Chair, IEEE PES Women in Power Congress in Region 10. 119 participants joined in day 2.

DAY 2:

At the beginning of the day 2, Dr. Celia Shahnaz. thanked all participants who registered & participated in the congress. She also noted that 281 participants registered from 26 different countries. Dr. Celia congratulated and thanked the previous day’s speakers for their valuable speeches.

Then Dr. Roumi li gave a welcome speech towards the speakers and other participants. She was overwhelmed to share that she had learnt a lot from day 1 session. She also noted women need support from whole society to enhance the quality and to increase the participation in every sector. She admitted that audience may change their lives hearing the experience of the speakers.

After the welcome speech, the moderator invited the keynote speakers to share their thoughts based on their area of expertise.

First speech was delivered by Fai Fai Bai, Research Fellow, University of Queensland, Australia. She focused on women in power at Queensland. She stated that the participation of women in power engineering in Queensland is quite low. She also proclaimed that though there were some organization for women related to engineering, science and technology but they didn’t have role models who could motivate women empowerment in power engineering sector. She also shared some plans to initiate IEEE & WIP affinity group in Queensland.

Dr Alan Harvey, GM, Acupak. Pty Ltd, Chair, Victorian Section, 2018-19. He delivered his presentation on Flea power for IoT. During his speech, he was instrumental to describe- why flea power for IoT, commercial or industrial installations, remote area IoT power supplies, local variables, solar & wind power systems, hot device extraction and vibration. In summary he concluded that environmental variables provide power for remote IoT systems where electrical storage commonly needed.

Xia CHEN, Associate Professor, School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China , delivered her speech on ‘Experiences & Feelings during the COVID-19 Epidemic in Wuhan’. She explained her challenges how she had contributed in research during epidemic. As a researcher, she demonstrated her working path in this epidemic. Last but not least, she also shared her presence as a community worker for delivering food packages to more than 200 family in her community.

After that, Prof. Sunitha Beevi. K, Dept of EEE, TKM College of Engineering, Kollam, Kerala, shared her experience on ‘Launching WOW: A role model WiP event for R10 PES Chapters’. She introduced the term “wow”, shared advantages of WoW & series of talk shows took place under this banner and success of IEEE Kerala section with all the audience. She shared the vision to open an international gateway for the audience to interact with women from different parts of the world ,discuss about the technologies and attract the women researchers to interact and collaborate with each other.

Dr. Tong Wang, Associate professor, North China Electric Power University, China shared her ‘Profound influence of COVID 19 epidemic to her life and Research at Beijing’. She divided her speech in three aspects: Life, Teach & Research. She admitted, she could spend more time with her family during the epidemic situation which was quite impossible in normal situation. As a teacher she felt, as E-classes or online classes were the only way to interact with the students, it affected hands on part like laboratory works . She also noted that Covid 19 had drastic impact on the power system because of severe lockdown on everything, hence power consumption in industry became low. Covid 19 shut down enabled her to cherish her family time but on the other hand, challenges brought to the power system enabled her to contribute more into it. She urged for the collaboration & contribution from female engineers to overcome their challenges and requested everyone to transform the depressing time into power of knowledge sharing.

At this point, Jinghan HE, IEEE Fellow, Professor, Head of School of Electrical Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, China, Vice Chair of WIP China, delivered her speech. She completely focused on IEEE as an International Communication Platform and her contribution to IEEE since 2007. She mentioned the gruesomeness of the pandemic situation and the financial support of IEEE to the sufferers of Wuhan. She unfolded a new dimension of pandemic- the improvement of resilience of women as mother, daughter, wife, researcher and community member under Covid19 .

Next speaker was Yingjie LIU, S&T Dept, CSG Yunnan Company, China. Her topic was Technological Innovation and Company Development. Why do we pay great attention to science & technological innovation, how do we do technological innovation and result or effects or achievement of technological innovation – she designed her speech focusing on these three questions. As she mentioned, technological innovation is highly required to address the issues and improve safety and stability of power and grid operation. She showed approaches and activities of innovation: Innovation Management, Innovation Environment and the most important Technological Innovation. She also showed the outcomes, achievements and effects of innovation in China.

Thereafter, speech was delivered by Gunjan Gautam, Operations Officer, The World Bank. His topic was The World Bank---WE POWER and IEEE Partners. Gautam reflected that women participation in power sector is lower in South Asia than other regions. He also stated that the number of women working in top level and managerial position is also very low in this region. He disclosed the key barrier as less graduate students in pipeline who would join the industry. To overcome this problem , the world bank introduced a program named We Power and got a partnership with IEEE. Partners & We Power implemented gender activities under 5 pillars from February 2019 to February 2020. They attained 24 partners, 625 activities with 10836 female participants.

The next speaker was Dr. Tina Chou, InterGrid, IEEE Young Professionals, Women in Engineering, Women in Power in Power & Energy Society with the topic on the table- ‘Renewable energy development and integrated solution in Taiwan power grid’. The national renewable energy policy of Taiwan had some challenges related to power section in Taiwan and govt. was taking initiatives to cope with it. Hence renewable energy section was improving day by day. She proclaimed that this is an era adopt high percentage of renewable energy which can reserve electricity, reduce the use of carbon, lessen the climate change and save the earth. In this aspect her effort goes to increase the involvement of women in power sector in Taiwan.

Zhenfei CHEN, Associate Professor, College of Energy and Electrical Engineering of Hohai University, Nanjing shed light on an interesting area- ‘Middle-aged women teachers in the epidemic’. Like others she also started online teaching during epidemic and thought of 3 plans to generate good online classes. She believes ,doing own job well is a contribution to society. She shared the negative effects of epidemic such as income falls, traffic restrictions and illness of family members and also the opportunities caused by this epidemic such as spending more time with families , big leap in communication technology etc. She was overwhelmed to learn many things from all other excellent women sharing this platform of IEEE.

All the keynote speakers shared their invaluable speeches in this great congress. Day 2 ended with the thank you note by Dr. Roumei Li. She appraised the women engineers’ contribution towards society and towards family and encouraged to go beyond. Anamika Bhakta, WIE chair, IEEE BDS also thanked all the organizers, executive committee members, and her mentor Dr. Celia Shahnaz for inspiring and make it a very successful and insightful event ever.

Snaps from Day 2: