Editorial

Dear Colleagues,

2021 was clearly a transition year: Vaccine availability enabled the economy to pick up again but we have still been left with heavy constraints on our lives, and sadly an important human toll.

CIGRE continued to grow its memberships and its activities, driven by the Central Office and the Technical Council, and culminated by the very impressive Virtual Centennial Session. What we missed, however,  was the very essence of CIGRE: person-to-person exchanges, meeting with peers from all parts of the world, and networking.

2022 should allow this, and the long-awaited Paris Session will take place. Exhibitors have booked all the available space and all we need now is you! This event will greatly contribute to CIGRE meeting its financial goals, as will the changes brought to the collective membership fees approved by the General Assembly (thank you for that)!

As for this year’s focus, we will be seeing much more about low carbon hydrogen generation contributing to the energy transition. Hydrogen is to be used as a decarbonized fuel replacement for industries which require high heat or energy density. CIGRE is investigating,  the load  impact of its future mass production via electrolysis on the network as well as the role of the solid state  rectifiers  delivering  system services such as frequency adjustment  as part of demand side management.

This edition of ELECTRA includes:

• Views by Andre Merlin, Honorary Chairman of RTE (French TSO) and former president of CIGRE, on the uses of low carbon Hydrogen
• BEHYOND, a European initiative bolstering the joint operation of hydrogen and offshore wind.
• The challenges of the Colombian 28 GW system operation integrating around 9 GW of solar and wind power within four years.

I hope that the pandemic evolves favorably in your country and that our own energy can be focused on meeting the challenges of the global energy transition.

I look forward to meeting you in Paris!

Regards,

Michel Augonnet