On January 25th  IEEE (PI)2Austin hosted Technical Meeting titled “Tilting at Windmills: Drivers, Risk, Opportunity, Resilience and the 2021 Texas Electricity Grid Failure”
Speaker: Matthew Hause, Principal Consultant, System Strategy, Inc.
Matthew presented a “system-of-systems” analysis of the different stakeholder goals, inter-relationships, and some of the wishful thinking that is going into current policies for Winterization of the Texas power infrastructure.  …

On December 5th, IEEE (PI)2 Austin held a Volunteer Appreciation Dinner at Cover 3, Anderson Lane. In addition to a social hour with old and new friends and colleagues, and a terrific dinner, the event concluded with the extremely funny, Don McMillan of Technically Funny, Inc, providing …

Residential Electrification and Resilience – Electricity Use Changes from COVID-19 and Winter Storm “Uri”
Scott Hinson, Chief Technology Officer at Pecan Street, gave a cohesive presentation of the insights on electric vehicle charging and electricity usage during the pandemic year and during the sever winter …

Bob Hebner, Director of the Center for Electromechanics at the University of Texas at Austin presented on WebEx and at Cover 3 on Anderson Lane Bob first presented an overview of the serious event that nearly shut down the entire Texas electric grid, and cause many …

Our speaker, Steve Kanetzky, provided real world examples of the challenges in providing engineering testimony, whether expert or just a subpoenaed witness. Engineers have to tell clients/customers/employers the straight facts at all times, of course, but doing so with expert testimony adds another level of …

Our speaker, Shea Petricek, Director of Marketing and Applications, Infrastructure Power, Renesas, reviewed the unique challenges and great opportunity for digitally controlled power delivery systems that include modern computer loads in combination with the dominance of hyper-scale data-centers.  Modern digital power solutions address the increasingly …

On June 22nd,  IEEE (PI)2 Austin hosted a virtual and in-person Technical Meeting entitled “Power-Electronics-Enabled Autonomous Power Systems: Next-Generation Smart Grids”  Dr. Qing-Chang Zhong of the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, a Distinguished Lecturer of three IEEE Societies discussed his research and vision that future …

Stray Voltage in Human and Animal Environments:
The term stray voltage was originally coined in the 1970’s when dairy producers and utility engineers realized small voltages between cow contact points stressed the animals and if high enough, reduced milk production. Since then, the term has grown …

Pradeep Shenoy of Texas Instruments gave a terrific presentation getting into the nitty-gritty of point-of-load DC/DC converter design and testing. A large crowd of attendees made the presentation very engaging with its interactive format. The session covered issues found in converter capabilities, component selection, control …

On March 23rd, Kevin Chandra of Austin Energy, discussed the status of the Electric Vehicle Programs at Austin Electric, a multi-faceted Electric Vehicles programs at Austin Energy, followed by an extended Q&A session. Austin is nationally recognized as an electric vehicle friendly city with over 1000 charging ports serving …