CIGRE Southern Africa held its 10th Conference online

Eventually it was concluded that an online event would be the best option, given the mentioned uncertainties. A call for papers was issued with only about seven months before the event date, and it covered all the 16 study committees of CIGRE. An overwhelming response of 97 synopsis was received with about 70% of those coming in in the last 24 hours of the call window. Each submission was then reviewed by at least 2 subject matter experts, resulting in 77 synopses being accepted towards the targeted 24 papers for the conference. Eventually 33 papers were received and 31 of them accepted for the conference. We would like to thank the members of the review panel for their efforts in reviewing the abstracts and full papers thoroughly and timeously. We would also like to thank the authors for their contributions and for presenting with passion.

The first day of this 3-day event commenced with the opening address from the National Committee Chairman and then followed by the 3 world class tutorials as follows:

• Tutorial 1: B5 - Protection, Automation, and Control of the Evolving Grid, which was presented by Dr. A. Apostolov and Dr. N. Nair
• Tutorial 2: D2 - Transport Networks for utilities delivered by G.P. Mbouyap
• Tutorial 3: C6 - Rural Electrification given by K. Dedekind

Later, two parallel sessions were run where the National Representatives in CIGRE Study Committees shared the information on their respective study committees as discussed during the recent Virtual Centennial Session that was organized by the CIGRE Central Office in August 2021.

The second and the third day were dedicated to the 5 sessions of the 31 technical papers, with Women in Energy and Next Generation Network sessions topping up the last day. The paper sessions were categorized as follows:

• Session 1: Overhead Lines, Substations & Electrical Installations, and DC systems & Power Electronics [7 papers]
• Session 2: Power system technical performance, Power System Operation & Control, and Power System Environmental Performance [6 papers]
• Session 3: Active Distribution Systems and Distributed Energy Resources [8 papers]
• Session 4: Rotating Electrical Machines, Power Transformers & Reactors, DC systems & Power Electronics [5 papers]
• Session 5: Transmission & Distribution Equipment, Protection & Automation,

Power System Environmental Performance, and Power System Technical Performance [5 papers].

The closing ceremony was done by the Technical Coordinator, on behalf of the National Chairman and the following awards were presented to the voted best papers’ authors. There were 3 award categories as set by the National Committee: the best overall paper award, the best young engineer award (NGN <35years), and the best student paper. The winners were as follows:

Best Overall Paper

Best Young Engineer Paper

Niall Coogan - The CEO and Co-founder of AssetCool
Paper title: A twelve month field analysis of new overhead line conductor coatings to increase ampacity/reduce power losses in South Africa: Performance and durability assessments.

Best Student Paper

This Regional Conference would not be this huge success without the support from our sponsors and media partners. We would like to thank Fortinet, Doble Engineering, ACTOM and Hyosung for their generous financial support. We would also like to thank Energize Magazine, SAIEE Wattnow and ESI Africa for supporting our marketing efforts and Active Capture for partnering with us in organizing this event. Thanks to all the delegates who attended and finally to Mr. Rob Stephen, the past president of CIGRE, for continuing to grace our events with his attendance.

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Banner & thumbnail credit: Tatenda Mapigoti on Unsplash - Durban, South Africa