Industry highlights
Annual Site Visit
CURENT’s 4th Annual Site Visit was held on October 6 – 8, 2015. The previous site visits had been held in
the spring so this was a departure from the usual timing. However, both the industry day and the site visit
were very successful and it has been determined that future site visits will be held in the fall as well. Overall,
the site visit attracted approximately 60 industry attendees and approximately 200 students. These were
good numbers considering that there were several other big industry events going on during this same
week.
The site visit kicked off with an informal Industry mixer on Monday evening, Oct. 5th. Approximately 30 industry attendees met with each other and faculty to catch up and to discuss mutual topics of interest.
Our annual Industry Day had a representation of over 125 industry representatives, students and faculty
members. A stellar group of presenters kicked off the planning session including Michael McCarty, Principal Power Systems Engineer at Solar City; David Wade, Chief Operating Officer at EPB; Hongming Zhang,
EMS Network Applications Manager at Peak Reliability; Manu Parashar, Corporate Power System Engineer
at Alstom Grid; Jessica Bian, Technical Staff at FERC; David Roop, Director of Electric Transmission at Dominion Virginia Power; and Thomas Coleman, Director of Reliability Assessments at NERC. Their expertise
provided invaluable information to those in attendance. The afternoon presentations were divided into two
concurrent sessions – Power System Modeling and Estimation and Power Electronics – during which graduate students updated the audience on the latest CURENT research.
The Annual NSF Site Visit began the next day and focused on updating the center’s technological progress
to the site visit team. Dr. Kevin Tomsovic gave an overview of CURENT and its mission. This was followed
by overviews of the thrusts given by the thrust leaders. The Monitoring and Modeling Thrust overview was
given by Dr. Yilu Liu and Dr. Ali Abur; the Control and Actuation Thrust overview was given by Dr. Joe Chow
and Dr. Fred Wang; and the CURENT Engineered Systems Overview was given by Dr. Leon Tolbert. After
lunch, Brad Trento gave the Innovation and Industry Collaboration Program overview. A tour of the research
labs and a poster session followed at the Min H. Kao Building where Dr. Chein–fei Chen also gave a talk on
the Education and Outreach Program.
The 2016 site visit dates have been announced and are Nov. 15 & 16. The site visit will be held at the Crown
Plaza in downtown Knoxville, TN. See curent.utk.edu for further details. Thank you to everyone who participated in making our Annual Industry Day and the NSF Site Visit a success.
Above: Site visit attendees visit the Visualization Lab
Above: Site visit attendees and students discuss
research posters during the lab tours
Upcoming Events
2016 IEEE PES General Meeting
July 17-21 in Boston, MA
CURENT Industry Strategy Meeting (following the IEEE PES General Meeting)
July 21 at Northeastern University in Boston, MA
2016 CURENT Industry Day and Annual Site Visit
Nov. 15-16 in Knoxville, TN
newsletter Spring 2016
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