04/02/21 SEATTLE ELECTRICAL CONFERENCE

SCV Power & Energy/Industry Applications Chapter

Seattle Electrical Conference 

Date: Friday, April 2, 2021

Time: 7 AM – 4 PM (PDT) – “check in” for the talks you’d like to hear

Speakers/topics:

• Thomas Domitrovich, ‘NFPA 70 2023’ Technical VP, Eaton

• Hamzah Shanbari, HERO: Virtual Reality Safety Training Assessment

• Terry Becker, ‘Electrical Safety in the Workplace’ TW Becker

• Erling Hesla, ‘Data Centers: Finding Solutions’ EngePower USA

• Bianca Holtier Coury, ‘Building Construction,’ Eagle Software

• Sanjay Samuel, ‘Fuels Cells in Locomotives,’ Sound Transit

• Hind Abi-Akar, ‘Maintenance Requirements Fluids’ Fluids Engineering, Caterpillar

• Shanon Kalwani, ‘Proactive Approach to Protecting our Distributed Energy Grids’

• Siva Jayaram, ‘Long-Duration Energy Storage Systems,’ RRC Companies

• Marley Smith, Nuclear Test Engineer ‘The Current state of Nuclear Energy in the world’ PSNS

     … plus 8 more

Cost: none

Location: on the Internet (via Zoom)

Info and Reservations: https://www.seattleelectricalconference.com/

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04/14/21: ARPA-E: Developing Sustainable Energy Solutions for the Future

When: Wednesday, April 14, 2021 4:00 to 5:00 PM PT

Event Details   or http://power.ieeesiliconvalley.org/  RSVP:  Registration

Cost:  Free: Registration required

Speaker: Dr. Jennifer Gerbi, Acting Director and Deputy Director for Technology, ARPA-E

  Summary: The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) at the U.S. Department of Energy advances high-potential, high-impact energy technologies that are too early for private-sector investment. ARPA-E awardees are unique because they are developing entirely new ways to generate, store, and use energy.

   ARPA-E empowers America’s energy researchers with funding, technical assistance, and market readiness. The agency’s rigorous program design, competitive project selection process, and active program management ensure thoughtful expenditures, with a focus on transformational energy projects that can be meaningfully advanced with a small amount of funding over a defined period. The foundational structure and culture at ARPA-E is crucial to this success.

   Part of ARPA-E’s statutory mandate is to, “reduce energy-related emissions, including greenhouse gases” and to “improve the energy efficiency of all economic sectors”, and the agency’s funding opportunities focus on doing this by developing transformational technology solutions across the sustainability, efficiency and renewable energy spaces.

   Many ARPA-E programs, particularly the DELTA, ELECTROFUELS, ENLITENED, FLECCS, MARINER, and MEITNER programs, as well as others, work to directly address the core mandate of ARPA-E. I will be providing an overview of these programs along with an overview of how the Agency operates in order to achieve sustainable energy solutions for the USA.

Bio: Dr. Jennifer Gerbi currently serves as the Deputy Director for Technology at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). Dr. Gerbi leads the Agency’s development, launch, and execution of high-risk, high-reward energy R&D programs. Previously as a Program Director at the Agency, her programmatic focus at ARPA-E included improving the energy efficiency and management of buildings via advanced sensing systems and storage, novel insulating materials for windows, and renewable energy generation via photovoltaics.

Prior to joining ARPA-E, Gerbi worked at Dow Corning in multiple capacities. She started at the company in 2011 as a Program Leader in the company’s Business and Technology Incubator. In this role, Gerbi built and led a next-generation solar portfolio. Gerbi then managed a global team as a Business Builder, leading new business development for a lithium-ion battery program. Gerbi’s most recent role at Dow Corning was as an Applied Engineering and Technical Service Leader, where she led an electronics application engineering and development team, working directly with large global customers to enable technical solutions via silicones in consumer and crossover healthcare electronics markets.

From 2007 to 2011, Gerbi served as a Senior Materials Scientist at The Dow Chemical Company, focusing on the copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) solar technology effort, which included growing a small lab-scale environment into a commercial-scale effort within three years. Gerbi served her postdoctoral fellowship at Argonne National Laboratory, developing thin film diamond coatings for electronics and healthcare markets. She also worked as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Illinois on novel diffusion barriers.

Dr. Gerbi holds a Ph.D. in Materials Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She also received an M.S. in Physics from the University of Virginia and a B.A. in Physics from Bard College.

See you on the World Wide Web!

Steve Jordan

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03/18/21 Could California Have a Texas Sized Power Outage?

When: Thursday, March 18, 2021 5:00 to 6:30 PM PT

Event Details   or http://power.ieeesiliconvalley.org/  RSVP:  Registration

Cost:  $5 for IEEE Members, please register using this registration link and enter the IEEE PES promotion discount IEEE318: Registration required

Virtual Panel Discussion Open to the Public

Last month a weather driven sequence of events left millions without power for multiple days in Texas, America’s energy heartland.  The last two years have also exposed vulnerabilities in California’s power supply infrastructure, with both elective Public Safety Power Shutdowns and capacity-driven forced rolling blackouts.  Is California on a path to have a Texas sized power disaster?

Though there are important differences, there are many similarities between Texas’ power infrastructure and California’s: from wholesale market design, to high amounts of renewable generation, to the fact that both markets have experienced generation capacity shortages recently.  Furthermore, many of the trends that exist in both markets, coupled with trends in weather patterns, may exacerbate the capacity issues experienced recently.  So far California has been spared from a Texas-sized failure, but industry experts disagree as to whether California is equally vulnerable or possibly headed in that direction.

Our discussion will illuminate the key factors that led to the Texas blackout and relate those factors to how California is currently situated and where the state is expected to be in the near future.  We will also cover the various mechanisms that can be used to improve power infrastructure resiliency, e.g., revised incentives/regulations, energy storage, distributed generation, smarter grids, and demand-side management.  Tune in to hear a broad range of viewpoints on these issues from our panel of experts, moderated by an experienced industry analyst.

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03/25/21 Pioneer of Clean Energy Lynn Jurich

Please join us March 25 to Honor MIT’s 2021 Pioneer of Clean Energy:

Lynn Jurich, Co-Founder & CEO of Sunrun on the Internet

When: Thursday, March 25, 2021 5:00 to 6:30 PM PT

Event Details   or http://power.ieeesiliconvalley.org/  RSVP:  Registration

Cost:  $5 for IEEE Members, please register using this registration link which contains the IEEE PES promotion discount: Registration required

Virtual Fireside Chat Open to the Public

True pioneers are ahead of the pack – and benefit when the world comes around to their vision for the future. There is no better example in the clean tech space than Sunrun.

When Sunrun was founded 15 years ago by a few newly-minted MBAs, the rooftop solar industry was 1% of where it is today, only a few states were solar-friendly, solar panels were $3/watt, and home storage batteries were impractical. Fundamentally, the up-front costs of solar were out of reach to the vast majority of homeowners. Starting a solar business in this environment was nuts.

Sunrun’s journey from startup to successful public company was typical of pioneering survivors. Not only did the team develop a new residential solar business model and the infrastructure to help them scale, they also raised boatloads of cash to fund their rapidly growing solar installation business. Along the way they established close partnerships with solar equipment providers and installers, overcame resistance from skeptical utilities and policy makers, and took advantage of M&A opportunities for both revenue growth and technology.

Please join us to honor Lynn as our 2020-21 Pioneer of Clean Energy and to listen in on this fireside chat as she shares her team’s journey from crazy idea to viable business to successful public company. We’ll also get her thoughts on the future of solar and energy storage technology, the importance of public policy in the clean tech space, diversity in the workforce, and new opportunities in the rapidly changing electric utility business.

Speaker
Lynn Jurich Co-founder & CEO Sunrun
Moderator
Barry Cinnamon SB ’80 CEO Cinnamon Energy Systems
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10/14/20: Current State of Energy Storage: Technology and Markets

Speakers: Eric Wesoff, Editor, PV Magazine USA

Location:  WebEx on the Internet

When: Wednesday, October 14, 2020 4:00 to 5:00 PM PDT

Event Details   or http://power.ieeesiliconvalley.org/  RSVP:  Registration

Cost:  Free! Registration required

Eric Wesoff will update us on the current state of energy storage technology and markets.

Eric Wesoff, Editor, PV Magazine USA

Bio: Eric Wesoff is Editor at PV Magazine USA, and the former Editor-in-Chief at Greentech Media (GTM). Prior to joining GTM, Mr. Wesoff founded Sage Marketing Partners in 2000 to provide sales and marketing-consulting services to venture-capital firms and their portfolio companies in the alternative energy and telecommunications sectors. He also circulated and founded a weekly newsletter, The Venture Power Report, which was read by VCs, CEOs, and technologists in the early days of the renewable energy industry. Mr. Wesoff is a prominent industry analyst, writer, consultant, speaker, thought-leader, and expert witness in the renewable energy field, and in autonomous vehicle technology and policy. He has expertise in clean technology investing and finance, utility structures and regulatory climate, solar power, energy storage, microgrids, and the electrical grid. .

See you on the WebEx!

Steve Jordan

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