Wednesday 9 October 2013

Power industry paper call!

The Program Committee of the 57th Annual ISA Power Industry (POWID) Symposium has issued a Call for Papers (pdf), inviting authors, innovators, thought leaders and other professionals in the power-generation industry to submit abstracts for presentation consideration at the conference. 

The symposium, the largest conference dedicated to automation, control systems and instrumentation in the power generation industry, will be held 1-6 June 2014 in Scottsdale, (AZ USA).

“Instrumentation and Control Solutions for Today’s Industry Challenges,” underscores the need to provide answers to the critical dilemmas in power generation, namely:
The theme of this year’s gathering,
  • Maintaining reliability of power generation while managing fluctuating load demands (known as cycling)
  • Securing critical data and information through advanced cybersecurity
  • Meeting increasingly stringent environmental controls regulation
“All of these difficult challenges require instrumentation and control technology as part of the solution,” declares Aaron Hussey, Director of Technical Services at Expert Microsystems, Inc., and General Chair of ISA’s 2014 POWID Symposium. “Utility companies need to address them head on as they organize their current business units and plan for the future.”

“For instance,” he points out, “maintaining and improving reliability in the face of increased cycling is increasing the demand for technical talent that can create and apply innovative solutions for new types of operations, such as low-load and faster ramp rates.

“The need to address cybersecurity is also boosting demand for difficult-to-find technical talent skilled in the overlapping areas of controls and information technology. And meeting increasingly stringent environmental controls regulation significantly shapes how and why utilities make capital investment decisions, retire certain units, and deliver power generation that meets load demand.”


Hussey emphasizes that automation and control professionals play a key role in helping to confront and manage these challenges.

“If these challenges are not addressed, ultimately electricity rates will increase due to the increased costs of meeting load demand. In addition, the only way you can achieve a more environmentally friendly generating portfolio is by adopting more reliable control equipment and continually improving automation technology.”

Attendees of ISA’s 2014 POWID Symposium, he says, will come away with:

  • A greater awareness and understanding of recent innovations in instrumentation, controls and automation technologies
  • The know-how to apply security to control systems; improve power plant load demand response and low-load operation; and monitor and diagnose plant equipment and system reliability issues through the use of sensors and online monitoring technology.

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