Opening Session- Julio Romero Aguero Plenary Session 2, Success Factors for Resilient and Decarbonized Grid- Damir Novosel Presentation- Hugo Gil This year’s theme for the Twelfth Conference on Innovative Smart Grid Technologies (ISGT 2021) is “Technology Solutions for an Evolving Grid”, sponsored by the IEEE Power & Energy Society (PES). It will be held virtually February 16-18, 2021 Eastern Standard Time.   Registration: https://ieee-isgt.org/

Coordinated Resource T&D Planning and Operation Towards Investment Prioritization Panelists: Stephen Teran & Dr. Hisham Othman. Description: Well established planning and operational processes in the electricity industry are often siloed and are being challenged in the face of significant technology migration and ambitious decarbonization and resilience policies to mitigate climate change challenges.  Integrated resource planning (IRP) , T&D planning, grid modernization, and risk mitigation require coordination and cross optimization to achieve the prevailing policies.  Increasingly, investments are interchangeable and/or interdependent across the electricity value chain.  A case in point is system resilience being addressed by investments in T&D assets and by customer-sited microgrids. Investment planning that optimizes across policy objectives will require closer coordination across planning and operational processes. This webinar will identify key areas of necessary convergence and explore their current status and perceived gaps. It will further discuss technical, organizational, and regulatory barriers to convergence and will propose solutions to guide the development of a roadmap towards greater coordination and integration.  Key areas of focus will include integrated T&D planning (including non-wire alternatives), resilience planning, asset management, short- and long-term forecasting, protection and control, coordinated energy storage across T&D systems, and T&D operation centers. Event Link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/1685746349735108364  

Wide Area Protection Coordination (WAPC) Studies provide a comprehensive review of coordination for a selected region or the entire transmission network of a utility.  Leveraging automation, these studies focus on coordination aspects of the protective relays for line, transformer, or bus faults, in a detailed manner in a relatively short period of time compared to traditional methods of coordination analysis. Each line study considers a wide range of fault types, fault locations, and system contingencies which needs to be tailored to a particular utility. Given the large scope of such studies, the results obtained can be overwhelming for an engineer to analyze.  Hence, it is essential to post-process the results and efficiently highlight the most critical issues to be addressed by the engineer. A WAPC study provides an effective approach to detect latent issues to improve reliability and highlight issues in preparation for the PRC-027 standard requirements.  The webinar will describe the WAPC process, illustrate some typical results, and highlight the utility benefits. Who should attend: Protection Engineers, Compliance Managers Quanta Technology Panelists: Majida Malki & Jorge Velez ConEdison Panelist: Hibourahima Camara Event Link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/6129220284934013709

Texas A&M Conference for Protective Relay Engineers Two Quanta Presented Papers: “Application and Integration of Automation-Based Tools for Efficient and Accurate Modeling of Transmission System Protection” Daixi Li, Tim Chang, Saman Alaeddini, Guanhua Wen, Xinyang Dong, Quanta Technology“Utilities are increasingly looking towards simulation-based protection evaluation capabilities within short-circuit software to assist their engineers in meeting the requirements of emerging compliance standards and performance metrics. Automated protection modeling can be a solution to the complexities of creating and maintaining accurate protection representation on these software platforms.This presentation discusses the practical challenges and considerations associated with the implementation and utilization of these automated protection modeling methodologies, including aspects of data preparation, day-to-day operation, and long-term governance. The real-world experiences presented in this session draw from four utilities across the United States, each with different practices, conventions, and preferences.” “Process Improvement of Distribution Protective Relays Coordination” Mehrdad Chapariha, Mohamed Maria, Saman Alaeddini, Quanta Technology   Presentation Title Process Improvement of Distribution Protective Relays Coordination (March 25) Abstract: This paper discusses the improvement of protection settings reviews performed by protection engineers in utilities regularly. It highlights common process inefficiencies, shows the improved deployment of data sources and proper use of software tools, and demonstrates filling gaps with automated routines. The rapid expansion of renewable energy resources and evolving regulatory requirements have increased the demand for these studies and necessitated a quicker turn-around time. The paper presents three practical examples implemented in a real power network. The solution presented in this paper results in considerable time savings and forms one of the major building blocks for adaptive protective schemes in the future. Authors Mehrdad Chapariha (Presenter) , Mohamed Maria, and Saman Alaeddini (Quanta Technology) Miguel A. Vazquez, Arthur Giourdjian (Presenter), and Gurinder Gill (San Diego Gas and Electric®)    

Our Keynote Speaker is Dr. Shay Bahramirad, Vice President, Climate & Resilience at Quanta Technology. Globally recognized as an industry leader that is passionate in defining the next horizon of the electric utility industry – as evidenced by media mentions in industry, business, and mainstream channels; primary author of white papers; speaker at industry conferences; and holder of 4 U.S. patents. Passionate about mitigating climate change and driving social equity. Shay was most recently Vice President, Engineering and Smart Grid at ComEd in Chicago.  With all of the changes happening in our industry, this is a Keynote Address you won’t want to miss! This event is truly unique in our industry because it brings together all of the leading manufacturers for reclosers and recloser controls along with the “who’s who” from utilities to share their experiences and knowledge in reclosers, testing, and distribution automation. NETA CTDs: Attend this seminar and have the opportunity to earn 6.5 NETA CTDs (Continuing Technical Development Credits).   www.omicronenergy.com/recloser

NASPI Work Group Virtual Meeting The North American Synchrophasor Initiative (NASPI) Work Group Virtual Meeting will be April 13-15, 2021. Please join us for three full days featuring technical sessions and presentations discussing • high-resolution sensors characterizing the transient behavior of inverter-based resources and other fast-acting phenomena, • using measurement to enhance the accuracy of inverter-based resource models, • statistical analysis and deep learning for extracting actional information for large datasets, • advanced distribution system applications. April 14, 2021 Session #5 Time:2:25-2:40pm Session: WECC Synchrophasor Data Exchange – Panelist: Dan Brancaccio (Quanta Technology) Date: April 15, 2021 Session #8 Time: 2:20-2:35pm Session: IEEE PES-TR74: Panelists: Yi Hu & Ken Martin Session #10 Time: 4:00pm-4:10pm Session: Distribution Synchronized Measurements Technology Deployment Roadmap Panelists: Julio Romero Aguero (Quanta Technology)/Lingwei Zhan (ORNL)

“Proliferation of Renewables and Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) and FERC order 2222 are strongly driving business cases for DERMS deployments. This webinar presents a crosscut of the DERMS deployment and integration challenges following experience and lessons learned from recent DERMS implementation projects. The presenters discuss these issues by way of three utility implementations: • DERMS deployed in a specific region to address issues with several Front of Meter DERs to mitigate impact on a substation, • An enterprise-level DERMS scaled across the entire utility service territory, selected subsequent to performing multiple pilot projects, • DERMS as Aggregator of Aggregators with a primary focus on managing several third-party resources and aggregators. Key discussion points are: • Functional specifications based on unique system characteristics, • Compatibility with a given utility IT/OT environment, • Alignment with existing or planned advancement of distribution management systems (DMS).” Quanta Technology Panelist: Farid Katiraei, Chad Abbey, Shadi Chuangpishit Entergy Panelist: Samrat Datta Registration Link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8326567885391867918

May Webinar- Practical Implementation of Engineering Automation for Protection and Control Utilities have increasingly turned to the digital transformation of processes and data to address the challenges brought on by emerging new technologies, increased regulatory requirements, and an aging workforce, and to optimize the efficiency and capabilities of their engineering departments. This webinar presents the innovative engineering automation program undertaken by a major west coast utility’s Protection and Control department to integrate software-based automation techniques for system-wide analysis, reporting, compliance, and safety applications. This discussion will include considerations for holistic data management, technical requirements, and strategies for transitioning the engineering team to the utilization of automation-based processes. The real-world experience of employing these automation, integration, and data management solutions at San Diego Gas & Electric provides one potential implementation for the successful digital transformation of data and processes to assist protection engineers in meeting the challenges of the modern power systems industry. Who should attend: Protection engineers, Compliance managers, Data management specialists Quanta Technology Panelists: Saman Alaeddini San Diego Gas & Electric: Chris Bolton May 20, 2021- 11am-12pm EDT https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/2144010705081717519

Keynote Title: "Benefits of Deploying Synchronized Measurements in the T&D Systems - Key Success Factors and Examples" Keynote 2 Speaker: Damir Novosel (President of Quanta Technology) Date & Time: Wednesday, May 26:  9:00am-10:00am EDT   Panel 4 Title: Synchronized Measurements in the Utility Control Center San Diego Gas & Electric Quanta Technology Panelist: Dan Brancaccio Date & Time: Thursday, May 27: 11:45am-1:00pm EDT

Registration Link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/1091223923884524043 Abstract: The federal government is considering more than $250 Billion in proposed spending for EV incentives, the electric grid, and clean energy. Though utilities have been preparing for EV adoption, an increased pace of adoption, as well as expansion of electrification to medium/heavy duty vehicle classes, may create issues in how best to respond to the expected charging needs.   Quanta Technology is hosting a two-part webinar that provides a holistic view of the challenges facing the electricity grid and how industry stakeholders can work with utilities to ensure seamless integration of vehicles to help States realize their decarbonization goals. June 24 Webinar: This is the first of two webinars on Electrification Infrastructure. This webinar will focus specifically on infrastructure planning, starting at the electric utility system level.  From the system level to the substation and feeder level, the webinar will present the effects of expanded light-duty adoption as well as the impact of medium and heavy-duty fleet electrification with its accompanying fast charging – the applications which are likely to have the most dramatic impacts on utility infrastructure in the near-term.  Two examples of technology and process that are being used to address these impacts will be presented, the Service Center of the Future and the Mobility of Freight Distribution across the U.S. Event Link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/1091223923884524043 Pt 2 webinar link:: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/5320315080856495631  

Registration Link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/5320315080856495631 Abstract: The federal government is considering more than $250 Billion in proposed spending for EV incentives, the electric grid, and clean energy. Though utilities have been preparing for EV adoption, an increased pace of adoption, as well as expansion of electrification to medium/heavy duty vehicle classes, may create issues in how best to respond to the expected charging needs.   Quanta Technology is hosting a two-part webinar that provides a holistic view of the challenges facing the electricity grid and how industry stakeholders can work with utilities to ensure seamless integration of vehicles to help States realize their decarbonization goals. This is the second of two webinars on Electrification Infrastructure.  This webinar will focus on the implementation and testing of charging infrastructure which is essential to enabling advanced and emerging concepts such as managed charging and vehicle to grid (V2G).  The webinar will present examples of testing scope and methodology to ensure the proper operation of chargers and charger aggregation.