e-News for power industry leaders

Welcome to the 14th Edition of our industry newsletter - In The Loop (ITL)

2018 is looking to be another busy year for CIGRE activities and involvement. We have recently concluded our A2 Transformer Tutorial event in Sydney and are busy organising and planning our attendance and participation at the Paris Session later this year as well as preparing for our own biennial SEAPAC and CIDER conferences in 2019.

We are also offering several new events this year - C4 Tutorial; an Electricity Market Workshop and a Master Class series on High Voltage Insulators - more information and registration links can be found in the EVENTS article referenced later in this edition. 

Our AGM this year will be hosted in Hobart and will include the rare opportunity to have a guided tour on the  CSIRO's Antarctic Research Vessel  RV Investigator which will be in dock that weekend.

From a technical perspective we were spoilt for choice this edition and have held some items over for future editions.

In this edition we present work being undertaken by three(3) different global working groups which all have Australian membership and have produced Technical Brochures on their work.

• Working Group C1.27 considers the future of reliability and the issues that power system designers and operators will need to address given the fundamental changes to our power systems that are being experienced worldwide with increasing amounts of renewables, particularly where small scale consumers are able to generate, store and control their own electricity usage.

• Working Group B1.41 looks at a very focused and specific are of the long term performance of soil backfill of cable systems and whether the traditional assumptions about the thermal environment implicit in the cable ratings remain valid.  The brochure includes consideration of several Australian and international case studies.

• Working Group C5.21 discusses the impacts of Environmental and Energy Policy on power markets.  The Brochure produced captures the impacts (often unintended) of regulations and schemes that most directly interact with power markets.

As we have several interesting Technical events and seminars on the calendar we also have a specific article on our upcoming events as they provide a broad technical knowledge source from not only regional expertise but also a window into what is taking place internationally.

In line with disseminating some of the technical knowledge and investigation that CIGRE is involved in,  our board has this year decided to hold several of its' meetings face to face in different locations near our membership base.  Aligned with these board meetings we have been holding free half day techncial seminars at  which we have had some of our technical convernors and members involved in Working Groups discuss the projects and work.  So far we have held one of these days in Perth and Melbourne with quite good attendance and feedback.  The next free seminar will be held in Sydney on 10 July.  (Detail will be on our webiste when available)

Finallly, whilst there is some work still to be done, you may also be interested to know that CIGRE Australia has recently been assisting the Philippines in establishing their own National Committee, which is a great initiative on their part and will add to knowledge and expertise of the CIGRE family.

As always, I trust you will find the content of this newsletter relevant and interesting and enjoy the read.  This is a freely distributable newsletter, so feel free to pass or forward to colleagues if you believe they may find the articles of interest.

If you have any comments or suggestions for articles or topics, please feel free to contact me by phone (07) 3310 8838  or email enquiries@cigreaustralia.org.au

Best Regards

Terry Killen
Executive Manager
CIGRE Australia

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