GEARED Goes to the North American Power Symposium 2015

The University of North Carolina/Charlotte and the Energy Production and Infrastucture (EPIC) welcomed GEARED students and faculty to the 47^th North American Power Symposium (NAPS) at the University of North Carolina/Charlotte October 4-6, 2015. This 47^th gathering of NAPS, held annually at a different university in the U.S., provides an international open forum for academia and industry to exchange innovative ideas and solutions about power systems and the electric grid.

For this conference, students were invited to submit posters for a GEARED student poster session. The session offered an excellent opportunity for students to present preliminary or interim results of their research work. A huge success, students work centered on analytical, computational and experimental studies aimed at solving problems related to operation, control, monitoring, protection and reliability, the economics of power and energy systems and components. In all, 47 posters were presented on Sunday, October 4, 2015.

Titles and authors of the posters presented at the student workshop can be viewed here [PDF].

Three posters were chosen as the top award winners based on technical contributions, poster quality, and presenter’s understanding of the research. Texas Instruments sponsored a cash prize award for each of the winners: 1st prize $500, 2nd prize $300, and 3rd prize $200.

Say hello to the 2015 student poster winners:

2nd_FEEDER2 — 2nd prize: Real-Time Fault Location Identification in Smart Distribution Networks with Distributed Generation Authors: Jose Cordova, Florida State University (FSU); Omar Faruque, FSU

3rdFEEDER2 — 3rd prize: An Integrated Optimization and Control Algorithm for Distributed Demand Responses in Smart Grid Authors: Towfiq Rahman, University of Central Florida (UCF); Yun Liu, Zhejiang University – China; Dr. Zhihua Qu, UCF; Marwan Simaan, UCF

GEARED students and faculty joined other conference attendees at the the welcome reception and pizza party on Sunday evening where the poster awards winners were announced. Thank you to Texas Instruments for their sponsorship of this event.

GEARED Network Meeting
As GEARED’s National Network Administrator, the Interstate Renewable Energy Council Inc., held a GEARED Network meeting after the close of NAPS from 1:30-3:30 pm on Tuesday, October 6, 2015. “More than 50 university faculty, advisory board members and GEARED project staff attended this meeting, including 15 students,” said GEARED Project Manager, Joe Sarubbi. “Faculty and students were very engaged, at one point discussing what constitutes a power systems engineer. It was the perfect forum to connect and be inspired.”