Events

The Seattle Section IEEE PES wishes to thank Kaylan Sen for a great talk on the pros and cons of traditional, power electronic and new methods for controlling real and reactive power flow in a transmission system. The lecture was attended by approximately 30 members from the area. The meeting space and refreshments was provided by Stella and Robin Podmore from Incremental Systems Inc., in Bellevue In addition to the technical talk, Robin and Kaylan discussed IEEE humanitarian initiative they are involved in.

We had another great Young Professionals event this month! Although the weather got a bit chilly on Saturday, 14 YPs from all over Seattle attended. Hardev Juj also joined us. He was the section chair 1992-1993 and is retired from BPA as VP of Transmission Planning.

A few photos follow.

We had 11 attendees from various work places including Microsoft, Amazon, AT&T, Power Studies, and Puget Sound Energy. We also had two students: one from UW Bothell and one from a university in South Dakota. Bowling was fun! There were some great moments of technical conversation during game play.

The IEEE YP event held Friday Feb 12th 2016 was a success! 17 YP’s attended from differing professionals including aerospace, computing, power systems, information technology, computer science, and the government. One of the YP put as “By far, the best IEEE event for YP’s in the Seattle area.” The fun and excitement from bowling coupled with meeting new people and networking certainly made this an enjoyable social event. Event planning and summer planning also took place. Join us for the next YP event!

The April YP event was a success! Twenty-two (22) YPs all over Seattle attended this event. Thomas Wu from Panasonic Avionics gave a short talk prior to the games. He spoke about his work as a System Integration Engineer for commercial airlines. A good discussion followed suit on the changing workplace for engineers and Young Professionals today. Everyone enjoyed the open-discussion environment, and many contributed to the discussion. Student attendees also enjoyed the networking opportunity with YPs. They asked insightful questions about jobs, interviews, and industry outlook.

On Friday, March 11th 2016, IEEE YP and IEEE PES Seattle YP hosted an event at Laser Quest in Federal Way. We were honored to have Mr. Tom Nugent, co-founder of Lasermotive, join us at Laser Quest for a talk about laser technologies. Lasermotive is an engineering firm developing technologies for efficiently transmitting power via lasers via a form of wireless energy transfer commonly called “laser power beaming”. Energy will be sent through air or the vacuum of space to a photovoltaic receiver, where it is converted back into electricity.

The talk was excellent and well attended. Ryan Pham presented to an audience of over 40 people. A few photos follow along with a link to the slides.

The tour of the Spark Museum of Electrical Invention went very well. We had around twenty people in attendance.

We held a raffle for all attendees for an autographed copy of Spark Museum Co-CEO John Jenkin’s book “Where Discovery Sparks Imagination”. The winner was John Somerville. Congrats!

The talk was excellent. Prof Cheng-Ching Liu gave an insightful overview of the problem of cyber-physical system security for a power grid. And he described the main importance and focus of recent research on the topic.

The VIP Hardhat Tour of the Grand Coulee Dam was fantastic. We had 18 attendees accompanied by numerous Grand Coulee Dam staff members. The tour lasted over four hours allowing us to see extensive portions of the dam. The large photo collection below is testament to the tour.