2024 Outgoing Study Committees Chairs

Study Committee A1: Power generation and Electromechanical energy conversion

It has been both challenging and rewarding to chair CIGRE SC A1 over the last four years. This would not be possible without the dedication, commitment and combined expertise of the whole CIGRE community. Thank-you all for your support.

Reflections as SC A1 Chair (2020-2024) on four years of A1 achievements

• As part of the CIGRE 2030 Strategic Plan, SC A1 proposed a change of name from “Rotating Electrical Machines” to “Power generation and electromechanical energy conversion”. This will enable SC A1 to better serve the evolving technical landscape covered by rotating machines, driven by the energy transition.
• The SC A1 Strategic Plan and Action Plan were updated in 2024 to reflect the recent SC name change, update the scope definition and define a forward-looking action plan to address the CIGRE 2030 Strategic Plan and Energy Transition.
• A Newsletter was established to keep the SC community better informed of CIGRE activities related to A1.
• 2023 saw the return of the odd-year face.to-face SC meetings following the disruption created by the CORONA-19 pandemic. The event, held in Kyoto, Japan, was a great success. Thanks to all involved.
• A1 published 7 technical brochures, submitted 1 CSE paper and presented 7 tutorials on a variety of topics.
• SC A1 has seen an increase in the number of papers related to wind turbines, and this year one paper on generators for marine applications.

Future challenges and expectations for SC A1

The future challenges for SC A1 are driven by three main developments:

The Energy Transition

As the energy transition continues to evolve, SC A1 needs to adapt broaden its appeal to a wider community. In 2023, the first step in this adaptation was to change the name of the SC to “Power Generation and Electromechanical Energy Conversion” and revise the scope definition to visibly encompass more alternative technologies to encourage the  participation of the related communities. In the coming years SC A1 needs to build on this to continue to attract younger, diverse talent and bring new perspectives to the work of SC A1.  

Operational and business environment

The quality of CIGRE work relies heavily on the responses to questionnaires circulated amongst the Regular and Observer members for completion by experts in their countries. Increased competition and focus on intellectual property driven by market globalisation and the break-up of large utilities into independent business, has meant that it is increasingly difficult to get detailed responses on specific topics. SC A1 must adapt to this changing business environment.

Technology trends

SC A1 needs to continue to identify technology trends and changes to the operational duty and load profile of both new and installed machines to ensure the technical directions and SC structure are relevant and attractive to the engineering and broader community engaged in the production and consumption of electricity. Current trends are driven by economic pressure to achieve greater capacity for peaking power, increased energy production from existing power plant, extension of service life, and changes in power system performance/regulation requirements.

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Study Committee A3: T&D equipment

"Alone we are smart, together we are brilliant”
I extend my deepest gratitude to all A3 active Working Group Members, Conveners, Advisory Groups, liaisons, paper authors, contributors, reviewers, presenters, special reporters, and NC representatives. Collective efforts have driven significant progress in our field. A huge THANK YOU goes to A3 Secretary Frank Richter for his major contribution and tireless support throughout this time.

Reflection on Chairing A3

It has been an incredible honor to chair the CIGRE A3 Study Committee (SC) over the past six years. Working with such dedicated experts from around the world across all 16 committees has been a truly enriching experience. I’ve grown not only as a technical expert but also as a person.

CIGRE is more than an organization; it feels like a family where we collaborate, overcome challenges, and push the boundaries of our industry. The past few years, especially through the challenges of COVID-19, tested our resilience. Yet, we endured and continued to achieve great things together, demonstrating the strength of our community. During those times, I often recalled Nietzsche's wise words: “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”

Reflecting on these years, I am proud of our dedication and deliverables. A3 has actively participated in 10 events (conferences, symposiums, colloquiums), revised more than 300 technical papers, organized 6 strategic advisory meetings, established 15 WGs and JWGs, disbanded 11, published 5 Technical Brochures alone and 5 with other SCs (with an additional 4 to be published this year). We have also held 22 tutorials and 4 webinars, contributed to 3 Green Books, created the Utility Advisory Board, established a liaison with IEC TC 38, strengthened our relationship with IEEE, included NGN in our SC work, continued to work virtually during COVID (remember the 2020 and 2021 virtual Paris sessions?), re-energized the A3 community post-COVID, and last but not least, fostered strong collaboration with other SCs the Central Office

In closing, I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to have led such a dynamic and resilient committee. As I step down from this role, I remain confident in the bright future ahead for the entire CIGRE community. I am committed to continuing my contributions to the Power Sector and supporting CIGRE in the years to come. I also look forward to witnessing the future path of A3 and playing a meaningful role in the broader mission of our beloved Study Committee

Future Challenges

As the global energy landscape shifts toward sustainability, the CIGRE A3 Study Committee is addressing critical challenges in transmission and distribution (T&D) equipment. Our work aligns with the CIGRE 2030 Strategic Plan, guiding our efforts in the energy transition.

A key challenge is integrating renewable energy sources into the grid. As we move away from fossil fuels, the variability of renewables like wind and solar requires T&D equipment to evolve. We must innovate smart, adaptable switchgear to handle two-way power flows and respond in real-time.

Enhancing grid resilience is another critical focus. With increasing climate-related disruptions and security threats, robust and resilient T&D infrastructure is essential. The A3 Study Committee is advancing equipment that can withstand and quickly recover from these challenges.

Digitalization is transforming the grid. We are committed to developing digital switchgear and intelligent electronic devices (IEDs) for real-time monitoring, data analysis, and automated decision-making, optimizing grid performance and reliability.

Reducing the environmental impact remains a top priority. Lowering greenhouse gas emissions through alternatives to SF6 and adopting eco-friendly materials will significantly reduce the carbon footprint of T&D equipment.

As these challenges grow more complex, collaboration is key. We must work closely with other CIGRE Study Committees and external organizations, such as IEEE PES and IEC, to share knowledge and drive innovation across our industry.

We are also committed to inclusion by actively engaging young engineers through NGN and promoting female engineers through the Women in Energy initiative. These efforts are crucial for fostering diverse perspectives and ensuring continued growth in our field.

Last but not least, I am honored to pass the baton to our new A3 Chair, Nicola Gariboldi. With his experience, vision, and energy, I am confident that under Nicola's leadership, A3 will continue to evolve, tackling the critical challenges of our time and further increasing our contribution to the power industry!

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Study Committee B3 : Substations and electrical installations

It has been an honour to work with you over the past six years and I am truly grateful for this opportunity. We are a family that has been through the best of times and the challenging times together. Thank you for the best moments of my life!

Reflections on SC B3 (2018-2024) achievements

B3 published a number of publications in the last six years.

• 19 Technical Brochures
• 5 CSE papers
• 5 Future Connections articles
• 1 End-to-end article for ELECTRA
• 1 reference paper for ELECTRA jointly with B1 and B2

B3 organised and supported Symposia, Colloquia and NC Conferences

• Led 2019 Chengdu Symposium and 2022 Kyoto Symposium
• Organised 2021 A2&B3 Joint Colloquium in Bucharest, Romania and 2023 B3&A3 Joint Colloquium in Birmingham, UK
• Supported 2021 Slovenia Symposium, 2023 Cairns Symposium, 2019 CIGRE-IEC Colloquium on EHV &UHV (AC&DC), 2018 CIGRE Workspot, Brazil NC, 2019/2021/2023 CIGRE CMDM, Romania NC and 2021/2022 CIGRE GCC Power, and online NC events.

B3 also supported CIGRE TC Africa Project and participated in the 2023 CIGRE-UMEME academy seminar in Tanzania in March 2024.

B3 established 13 WGs/JWGs and delivered 31 tutorials, 2 webinars and 3 workshops.

Future challenges and expectations for SC B3

To support the realisation of a sustainable society with energy transition, substations’ research & development continues to advance in new technologies and applications that offer substation owners and operators the flexibility, security and stability they need to continue to expand their systems efficiently and environmentally friendly. These activities must align with and anticipate the "CIGRE 2023 Strategic Plan - Entering CIGRE's 2nd Century - Horizon 2030".

The challenges mentioned above have resulted in several new initiatives:

• Dealing with the increased impact on substation design and new applications to support energy transitions such as integrating renewable energy resources, energy storage systems and other installations.
• Mitigating environmental, health, safety and security impacts, including the reduction of Green House Gas emissions and the substation carbon footprint
• Substation design, operation and maintenance, resilience against natural disasters and threats (terrorism, epidemic, physical/cyber, etc.) 
• Optimising substation asset intervention (retrofit, uprating, upgrading, renewal, extensions).
• Increased substation operational efficiency and availability.
• Integration of intelligence for digitalisation.
• New set of skills for new technologies, knowledge transfer, and high standards of education are needed in developing engineering skills.

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Study Committee B5: Protection and automation

I have had the honour to work with the SC B5 community as the secretary for 6 years and as the Chair for 6 years. In CIGRE we have unbiased technical discussions, share knowledge, and get friends across the world. CIGRE is part of my passion and is an important part of my life.

Reflections as SC B5 Chair (2018-2024) on six years of B5 achievements

CIGRE Technical Council have worked closely with CIGRE Steering Committee and CIGRE central office to develop the "CIGRE 2023 Strategic Plan & Horizon 2030: Entering our Second Century with Renewed Vision". This work has been important for CIGRE’s relevance in the Energy Transition attracting new entries in our End-to-End (E2E) scope.

CIGRE have a variety of stakholders and there are different expectations in terms of “produced documents”. SC B5 worked to diversify the publications, complementing the 16 traditional Technical Brochures with Green Books (“IEC 61850 Principles and Applications to Electric Power Systems", and one chapter in “Electricity Supply Systems of the Future”), reference papers, newsletters, tutorials, and webinars. SC B5 also formed 22 SC B5 led WGs/JWGs.

SC B5 organised the SC B5 Colloquium in Tromsø Norway in 2019. The pandemic accelerated many changes, including the way of working within CIGRE. SC B5 supported the CIGRE e-Session 2020 and the Virtual Centennial Session 2021.

The Technical Organizing Committee (TOC) for the  2021 Hybrid Symposium in Ljubljana was co-chaired between SC B5 and SC B1. SC B5 was also part of TOC for 2019 Chengdu Symposium, and the 2023 Cairns Symposium.

All achievements are the consequence of the long-term vision of past B5 Chairs and are the results of passionate work done by a large community of people who share their unbiased technical knowledge.

Future challenges and expectations for SC B5

SC B5 strategic plan focuses on providing key technical information related to protection, automation and control system to executives, regulators, policy makers and technology innovators. It also focuses on understanding and influencing the development of new technology and practices for all voltages and systems.

One of the important topics for SC B5 to address is protection related challenges in network with low-inertia and low fault-current levels. This topic includes grid protection impacts of increasing inverter-based resources, impact of inverter-based resources on distance protection, modelling of inverters for protection coordination studies, impact of inverter-based resources on transient stability and consequences for protection performance requirements, impact of decreasing grid inertia on transient stability and consequences for protection performance requirements.

Process bus-based substations is also an important topic for SC B5. There is an increasing number of developments and projects of process bus related solutions, both real-world implementations, and findings from laboratory or university studies. The prominence of discussions surrounding centralized, virtualized, and wide-area protection, automation and control applications indicates a significant trend. Specifically, the adoption of the IEC 61850 standard plays an important role in enabling these applications, with the necessary technology infrastructure already established.

The best and more important asset of CIGRE and of SC B5 are people. SC B5 needs to maintain the spirit and the willingness to contribute of its many experts and to give value to the many who are contributing, but also to attract and include more people from countries across the world.

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Study Committee C2: Power system operation and control

Yes, it is an honor to conclude a four-year cycle as Chair of CIGRE SC C2 alongside the Secretary of SC C2, Mr. Flavio Alves. A journey of learning, challenges and hard work. A vision of pride in what the group of SC C2 Members was able to build. May the future steps of SC C2 be increasingly grandiose and full of content for humanity.

Outgoing Chair Experience and Main CIGRE roles

With the ongoing support of C2 Secretary, all C2 members, SAG experts and WG convenors, the following results were achieved:

• 8 Technical Brochures were published
• 6 new Working Groups were launched
• 9 Tutorials and webinars were delivered at different events
• Co-led the Technical Organizing Committee for the 2023 CIGRE Cairns International Symposium
• Participation in 2021 Centennial Session, 2022 and 2024 CIGRE Session and 2022 Kyoto Symposium
• We disseminated information about the Africa Initiative among C2 members.

Future challenges and expectations for SC C2

Challenges: Significant reduction in load, from the perspective of the bulk system. Large demand ramps. Great variability in demand. Understanding the variability of new resources better, making optimal use of energy storage new possibilities, and making better use of dispatchable resources, are challenges whose solutions are always evolving.

To be replaced by the new Chairperson is to hand over responsibility to someone who will lead the group, guide the development of new knowledge, support the industry and suppliers, and seek the continued success of the operation of power systems in their mission.

How to improve the forecast of the shape of demand curves and their values, for the next day and for future periods?

How to obtain more flexibility from dispatchable supply sources to ensure demand is met with all the variability involved?

What new technologies are available or will need to be developed to provide answers to these challenges?

What new equipment will be the technical answers with compatible costs for system operation and control

Hydrogen? Batteries? Demand response? Flexible gas supply? Pumped storage plants? Interconnections? Something new not listed here? What is the optimal mix of these possibilities that will make up the best solution to the challenge of maintaining an operationally reliable system?

These are the "first steps" because we will remain in a time of rapid changes to be experienced by societies that consume electricity.

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Study Committee C5: Electricity Markets and Regulation

My term of six years has been a challenge with the changes to the industry as technology and government policies changed. Covid created its own issues but the work of CIGRE continued. It was a fabulous opportunity to coordinate the work of the SC during the Sessions and Symposiums, as well the working groups that have covered a diverse range of topics as CIGRE.

Outgoing Chair Experience and Main roles

Study Committee C5 has published or participated in the publication of a range of publication during the last six years:

• Nine Technical Brochures (one with another SC), dealing with topics such as emissions pricing, market development with new technologies and interactions between TSO and DSO.
• Two books: SC C5 contributed to the markets chapter of “A handbook of Powers Systems”, 2021, edited by K. Papailiou and provided Electricity Markets and Regulation chapter of the Technical Council Green Book “Electricity Supply Systems of the Future”, 2020

SC C5, in addition to the normal Paris Sessions and the Centennial Session:

• Participated in the 2019 CIGRE Canada Conference “Innovation at the heart of power grid transformation” in Montreal
• Co-chaired, with SC C2, the 2023 CIGRE Cairns Symposium “The End to End Electricity System: transition, development and integration”.

Personally, I have had the opportunity to contribute to

• the ELECTRA Editorial Board, which has been a fabulous opportunity to see the operation of Electra and the range of topics that are covered, and
• the reviews of the approach to papers for the CIGRE Session and Symposiums, which has led to a dramatic increase in participation by authors and an increase in the quality of papers being discussed.

Experience Summary

The nature of the industry is changing but market and regulatory principles remain the same. With new technologies entering and becoming dominant, the market and regulatory rules that had been applied to the old technologies need to be reconsidered in light of the different characteristics of the new technologies.

In addition, the requirements community and government expectations on our industry have changed from when the existing markets were developed both in relation to issues of transition and customer expectations. These changes require refocusing the markets and regulatory approaches, particularly in the areas of system security and power quality.

SC C5 has been at the forefront  of the changes with revisions to markets, changes to regulation and imposition of economic distortions to meet the requirements. The study committee will need to analyse and report on:

• the best economic and market thinking to ensure that the changes to the markets increase their efficiencies and
• Efficient regulatory approaches for pricing, access and system security,

to support the industry in achieving the optimal financial and economic outcomes for the communities that we serve.

The issues currently being addressed by SC C5 intersect with other study committees, particularly SCs C1, C2 and C6. This requires careful coordination and joint efforts to optimise to work of CIGRE.