Technical Committees

 

The AdCom approved the new PELS technical committee structure during its fall meeting at ECCE in San Jose, September 20, 2009.  This is the outcome of a long and detailed debate among the society members and repeated deliberations at three AdCom meetings at APEC, IPEMC, and ECCE. Various versions were proposed. What is shown below is the final approved one and captures the best from all previous versions.

It is important to point out that there are four dimensions within the approved new structure. The first dimension is that there is now a smaller number of technical committees at the top level (A total of seven (7) now vs. a total of 11 before.) This will bring more focus on each TC and allow a large pool of people for each area to sustain a stable operation. A stable TC structure and operation will improve their effectiveness and facilitate major activities such as awards, technical paper reviews, and leadership succession. It will also help ensuring quality and continuity of the TC personnel.

The second dimension is that the new structure has two tiers: technical committees (TCs) and technical thrusts (TTs) within each technical committee. The two-tiered structure brings agility and flexibility to the entire TC structure by allowing the technical thrusts to be relatively small. Small thrusts will allow a small group of people with similar technical interests to come together for new activities They will be to do this more real time, when new technologies are emerging without lengthy approval process. Hence the society, as a whole, will be more agile adapting to technological changes. Small thrusts also allow the flexibility for old or inactive thrusts to be resolved without causing any real interruption.

The third dimension is that the new TC structure brings more focus on application specific areas. As illustrated in below, TCs 1, 2 and 3 are our core technologies that enable what we do and are relatively application independent. They cut through all application areas. TCs 4, 5, 6, and 7 are application specific technical areas. They are more focused and will evolve as technologies develop. This structure reflects the state of the society more closely than the old structure since we are more applications specific now.

A forth and final dimension is that this structure was developed with synergy in mind - the synergy of our technical committee structure with that of our sister societies so joint meetings can be conducted to minimize the burden on committee members and maximize their productivity. One natural opportunity in this regard is the TC meetings at the ECCE where members from both the PELS and IAS get together (In some cases, they are actually the same group of people.). In the past ECCE in San Jose, joint meetings were held for both the drive committee and the converter committee, for example. Future development in this area, for instance, can be joint technical committees between PELS and IAS.

The telecommunication energy sub technical group is a special technical committee with a long and successful history. They have been consistently delivering excellent values to the society. Hence it remains unchanged, except the name change from “technical sub group” to “technical committee” in order to be consistent within the society and TCs in sister societies.

The standards committee will remain as a standing committee in order to be in compliance with IEEE mandated structure and synergy with other societies. A stand-alone standard committee will also facilitate the generation of new standards and new technologies emerge, develop, and mature.

1.  Power & Control Core Technologies

• Modeling, Control and Simulation
• Diagnostics/Prognostics
• Computational Intelligence, etc.
• Reliability
• Life-Cycle Cost
• Sensing and Communication (Wireless sensor nodes, etc)

2.  Power Conversion Systems and Components

• DC Power Converters
• Rectifiers, Inverters and Cyclo-Converters
• Converters on a Chip
• Power Semiconductors
• Passive Components
• Electronic Transformers
• Manufacturability and Testability

3.  Motor Drives and Actuators

• Industrial Drives
• Propulsion Drives
• Micro-and Cardinal Stepper Drives
• Sensorless Control, Integrated Drive Systems, etc.

4.  Vehicle and Transportation Systems

• Mobile Terrestrial Systems
• Storage for Mobile Systems
• Aerospace Systems
• Marine Systems

5.  Sustainable Energy Systems

• Distributed Generation, Demand Management, and Micro-Grids
• Sustainable Energy Sources
• Energy Storage, Gride & Interface, Smart Grid, and FACTS
• Power Quality
• Energy Harvesting/Scavenging/Wireless Power Transfer
• Sustainable Energy Economics and Policy

6.  High Performance/Low Cost Applications

• Industrial
• Consumer
• Appliances
• Information Technologies
• Medical Applications
• Lighting Applications

7.  Communication Energy Systems (INTELEC)

• Telecom Power Systems
• Energy Storage