Year in Review - Life Long Learning

Written by Peter Wung

As the year 2021 draws to a close, I would like to thank the IEEE Smart Grid volunteers and staff for their stubbornness and resilience in persisting onward with our passion and pursuing the hard work that these times had called for these last two years.

2020 was the shot heard around the world derailing the global economies which, in turn, thwarted many of our planned activities. As we transitioned to 2021, we all hoped that the worst was over and that we can return to a normal state of activities for the IEEE Smart Grid. While the situation that we found ourselves was not as dire and uncertain as before, there were still enough challenges to warrant seat-of-pants mode of operations than any group of stalwart engineers would desire.

Each of our standing committees, through the combined determination and efforts of the numerous volunteers, were able to operate effectively through 2021.

In fact, IEEE Smart Grid has created and participated in a number of new initiatives which serves to define our scope of operations and allows us to reach new audiences.

In many conversations amongst the Meetings and Conferences committee chair Anu Annaswamy, Marketing chair Alan Ross, our intrepid Program Manager Phyllis Caputo, and myself, we collectively decided to create an initiative that organizes panel discussions amongst the experts that are members of the IEEE Smart Grid. Our purpose is to leverage the abundant knowledge base within IEEE Smart Grid in order to satisfy our constituencies’ need for the latest information on the numerous parts of the vast body of knowledge that is the IEEE Smart Grid. We also intend to convert these unique gatherings of experts into opportunities for the IEEE Smart Grid to leverage the content into reference material for our portal and resource center.

The committee has been formed and is being guided by Dr Kaveh Aflaki. There is a form on the Smart Grid Portal which allows interested individuals to formally present their plans for panel discussion to the committee for guidance and approval.

I have been involved, with our Technical Activities Chair, Satish Saini, and Dr. Mostafa Farrokhabadi creating two elements in the Smart Grid Academy: Distributed Automation and Microgrids. The Smart Grid Academy is a result of the initiative launched by the IEEE’s Past President Toshio Fukuda to create academies dedicated to specific topics within electrical engineering. These academies are designed and dedicated towards meeting the intellectual needs of mid-career professionals who are seeking electrical engineering-based knowledge on contemporary areas of interest that are more in-depth than what is commonly available, yet are not at the level of the practicing expert. Indeed, this initiative called for experts to call upon their deep knowledge to fully explain the topics at the proper level.

This initiative has been in the works throughout 2020 and 2021 with the Instructional Designers from the IEEE Educational Activities Department to create a professional program of instruction that meets the expectations of experienced engineers.

In addition to these developments, the IEEE Smart Grid committees have been busy creating new initiatives in cooperation with our member societies as well as autonomously, with the purpose of informing the public at large and serving the needs of the practicing engineering community.

Thank you for being a part of this community and for supporting IEEE Smart Grid through these challenging times. We hope to always be better serving our friends and colleagues.  

To view all articles in this issue, please go to December 2021 eNewsletter. For a downloadable copy, please visit the IEEE Smart Grid Resource Center.

Pete Wung, PhD has been the Chair of the IEEE Smart Grid Program since 2018. He is also concurrently serving as the Educator-In-Chief of the IEEE Smart Grid Academy.

Prof. Wung is an adjunct professor at the University of Dayton, specializing in the fields of Electrical Energy, Renewable Energy, Power Systems, and Electric Machines and Drives. He has also served on the IEEE Smart Grid Program since 2014, serving as the Chair of the Research and Development Committee from 2015-2018.

He was awarded his PhD in Electrical Engineering in 1993 from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Master’s in 1984 in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. And a Bachelor’s in Science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1983.

He is a Senior member of the IEEE.