Electricity Industry Gathers for Annual Conference

Electricity Industry Gathers for Annual Conference on the Eve of the 125th Anniversary

New Zealand's electricity industry gathers for their annual conference 19-21 June at Sky City Auckland, on the eve of their 125th anniversary.

The Electricity Engineers’ Association conference is expected to attract over 500 delegates from around New Zealand and overseas, attending over 85 presentations and papers, debates and workshops.

The conference theme – “Electricity - Past and Future” - looks at the future challenges for the sector and picks up on 2013 being the 125th anniversary of electricity supply in New Zealand. The conference will take a glimpse at where we have come from but has a strong future focus with leading knowledge sessions on future grids, renewable energy, asset management strategies and issues, safety, technical human resource development and customer demand response opportunities.

Keynote presentations will be given by leading industry figures from New Zealand, Australia, USA, Europe and the United Kingdom.

Overseas speakers include Henry Louie, Vice President IEEE Power & Energy Society (PES) in the US and a specialist in smart grids, wind power and humanitarian engineering, John Sinclair from the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) UK and Phil Southwell Chair of the European based CIGRE International Committee C1 - Economics and System analysis for future power systems.

NZ speakers include Vince Hawkesworth CEO at TrustPower, Mike Underhill, CEO at the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) and Grant Gillard Managing Director of ABB.

“To extend the knowledge sharing and networking benefits of the EEA conference, we have organised a number of workshops running just before the event,” says Peter Berry, executive director of conference organisers the Electricity Engineers Association.

Workshops will focus on technical professional development issues including substation design; an alternator training programme suitable for hydro and thermal generation engineers; an asset management workshop for industry engineers and an incident investigation course (ICAM) for health and safety and engineering staff. “There will be plenty of 'real world' experiences for industry engineers to learn from and take back to their businesses,” says Mr Berry.

Industry suppliers have again strongly supported the trade exhibition with over 108 stands representing 80 organisations providing technology, equipment and services to electricity industry.

More details on the EEA Conference 2013 are available from; http://www.eea.co.nz/Category?Action=View&Category_id=421

ENDS

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