REPORT OF THE NPSS DELEGATE TO THE IEEE-USA ENERGY POLICY COMMITTEE

Ned R. Sauthoff IEEE-USA President-Elect

On May 24 in Washington, D.C., the IEEE-USA Energy Policy Committee is sponsoring and organizing a symposium entitled "Ensuring Electric Power Reliability - The Challenges Ahead". This event is aimed at bringing IEEE's leading expertise in electric power systems to bear and at bringing in leading stakeholders to enable informed discussions of this key issue of electric system reliability. Sponsors and co-sponsors include IEEE-USA, IEEE's Power Engineering Society, the Consortium for Electric Reliability Technology Solutions, the Electric Power Research Institute, and the U.S. Department of Energy. The symposium's dual goals are to educate policy makers on the key technology issues associated with the various electric power industry restructuring proposals and to develop recommendations to assure continued reliability, quality and safety of the industry as the new market develops. The symposium will include two keynote addresses provided by a high- level official of the Department of Energy and by Kurt Yeager, President and CEO of EPRI, and will have panel sessions to examine the interconnection between technical reliability issues and policy impacts in four critical areas:

1. Reliability and Markets - to explore the various relationships between market economics and systems engineering. Included will be points of view of system reliability, economic efficiencies and institutional/policy needs;
2. Reliability Management - to focus on the real world challenges and experiences of Independent System Operators (ISO's), market participants, and stakeholders;
3. Reliability Oversight - to discuss the diverse structure of the industry and its effect on creating uniform oversight in addition to who is "minding the store" during the transition period and ultimately who should be responsible for oversight in the future; and
4. Reliability Research and Development - to address the needs and direction of future electric power research, roles and responsibilities of the electric power industry and its suppliers and of the federal and state governments.

A summary of the outcomes will be presented in a future column.

The Committee participated in the science and technology community's Congressional Visits Day in early April. 350 members of science and engineering professional societies made 240 office visits, with constituents leading the delegations to each office. The effort is targeted at raising the Congress' awareness of science and technology and at reversing the perception that scientists and engineers are absent from the legislative process. Consider yourself encouraged to get involved in your national science and technology policy process.

The new fission task force involves IEEE's NPSS and the Power Engineering Society in developing a position statement on issues relating to fission power. The committee is refining its focus areas and will be drafting messages in the next months; if you have suggestions for messages, please feel free to forward them to me and I will send them to the task force members.

Thank you again for the opportunity to represent NPSS on the Energy Policy Committee. If you have comments or suggestions, or want to get involved, please contact me at n.sauthoff@ieee.org.

Ned Sauthoff, the 2000 IEEE-USA President-Elect, is also the NPSS Liaison to the IEEE-USA Energy Policy Committee. He can be reached at Princeton University, DOE Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, P.O. Box 451, Princeton, N.J. 08543; Phone: (609) 243-3207; Fax: (609) 243-3266; E-mail: n.sauthoff@ieee.org.

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