Co-sponsored by: Tommy Cooper IEEE Houston Consultants Network will have a general meeting from 5:30 to 7:30 on Thursday March 28th at the Clayton Library Center at 5300 Caroline St., Houston, TX  77004.  After an initial networking session with snacks provided, John Martin, PE, will provide a presentation on "Estimating Engineering Projects" Speaker(s): John Martin, Agenda: 5:30 PM – Networking and refreshments6:00 PM – Brief announcements and introduction of speaker6:15 PM – Presentation followed by Q and A7:30 PM – Adjourn and exit the building Location: Bldg: Carriage House Houston Public Library - Clayton Library Center 5300 Caroline Streeet Houston, Texas 77004

Harmonic analysis tools such as ETAP, EasyPower, CYME, and SKM are indispensable tools that aid engineers with the evaluation and mitigation of harmonics on industrial and utility power systems. However, when these tools are presented with bad input data or the program output is interpreted improperly it can lead to incorrect system designs.   In this IAS Session, NEPSI will provide the basics of harmonic analysis, (the ability to verify the output of your analysis program), the key steps in performing harmonic analysis, with discussion on input data (extent of modelling, impedance data, harmonic data, modeling of stray  capacitance, interharmonics, and non-characteristic harmonics), data validation, model validation, filter design, resonance, and interpretation of program outputs, and more.   If you don’t understand the basics, you cannot trust the output of your harmonic analysis program.   Agenda 5:30 PM – 6:00 PM – Snacks & Social 6:00 PM – 7:15 PM - Presentation Corporate Introduction (5 Minutes) Key Product offering NEPSI Resources Harmonics presentation (about 75 Minutes) Why perform analysis Harmonic current injection concept and harmonic producing loads Equivalent circuit simple system Impedance profile Equivalent circuit, simple system with shunt capacitors Resonance Calculation of voltage and current distortion Multi-step capacitor banks Impact of system variations, short circuit level, stray capacitance, motor load Equivalent circuit, simple system, but now with filters Resonance concern Voltage and current distortion calculation Type of Filters Notch C-HP HP Why use a different filter? Questions/Answers (as long as it takes) (15 Minutes) Speaker(s): Mr. Paul B. Steciuk, Agenda: 5.30 PM - 6.00 PM - Snacks & Social 6.00 PM - 7.15 PM - Presentation 7.15 PM - 7.30 PM - Questions/Discussion Location: Room: Conference Room 4C & 4D Bldg: Bechtel Tower 3000 Post Oak Blvd Houston, Texas 77056

Network with local young professionals and students with free boba for IEEE members from The Teahouse Tapioca & Tea. IEEE members must register (with IEEE membership number) to get the free boba upon attendance. This location has boardgames but feel free to bring your own!   Location: The Teahouse Tapioca & Tea - Shepherd Square Shopping Center 2089 Westheimer Rd Houston, Texas 77098

Network with local young professionals and students with free boba for IEEE members from The Teahouse Tapioca & Tea. IEEE members must register (with IEEE membership number) to get the free boba upon attendance. This location has boardgames but feel free to bring your own!   Location: The Teahouse Tapioca & Tea - Shepherd Square Shopping Center 2089 Westheimer Rd Houston, Texas 77098

ExCom meeting Location: Engineering Building 2, E413 University of Houston Houston, Texas 77004

Co-sponsored by: Rice University, ECE Dept. In almost every branch of the natural and social sciences, one often encounters systems where simple localized rules of interaction among individual units lead to the emergence of complex collective phenomena. Examples range from insect colonies to physical gas laws, and from macroeconomics to the behavior of large human crowds. This observation is naturally also of great interest to a wide range of engineering fields. A substantial amount of interdisciplinary research within the last forty years has been motivated by a desire to understand these emergent complex systems and to utilize them whenever appropriate for designing efficient engineering systems such as multi-agent robots and drones. In this talk, we focus on one particular line of research within this area: collective motion. This macroscopic phenomenon typically emerges in large multi-particle systems by invoking a few simple alignment and consensus rules locally within small radii of influence around each individual. To this end, we review various attempts in the research literature at numerically simulating the collective motion of bird flocks and fish schools, and highlight the role played by basic physical concepts such as phase transitions, statistical mechanics, and scale-free correlations. In addition, we shed light on a number of contributions from the field of automatic control theory where several researchers have provided solid theoretical foundations in the last few years for certain consensus-based observations by formulating the problem within a feedback dynamic system framework and employing technical results from network theory and related disciplines. Finally, we review a few open research problems and suggest potential lines of attack to address them. Speaker(s): Saad Saleh, Agenda: Technical talk at 4pm in Duncan Hall Room 1064, Rice Univ. campus, 6100 Main St., Houston, TX 77005. Technical presentation is free. Location: Room: 1064 Bldg: Duncan Hall Rice University 6100 Main St. Houston, Texas 77005