IFEC 2011 - 2011 IEEE International Future Energy Challenge (IFEC)

Returning from the PEDG 2010 conference in Hefei, China, and the IPEC-ECCE conference in Sapporo, Japan ? I am pleased to report that the IEEE Power Electronics Society is doing well. The Power Electronics for Distributed Generation (PEDG) conference represents a small but growing group of researchers who anticipated the shift towards distributed energy systems and have built a community around that area. Our ability as a society to respond to new trends and technology areas in a rapid but systematic manner is important for the society’s vitality. Conferences such as VPPC, Intelec and APEC position IEEE PELS as a technology leader in the rapidly growing field of power conversion and energy.

The IPEC-ECCE conference was the second conference in the ECCE-Asia series ? after the conference in Wuhan, China, in 2009. The next conference will be held as the ICPE-ECCE conference in Jeju, Korea, in 2011. In addition, EPE-ECCE will be held in Birmingham in 2011. It will be the first of an annual EPE-ECCE conference that will be held in Europe. Along with the annual ECCE conference in North America, this will help to bring under the IEEE PELS umbrella, three major international conferences in power electronics and energy. I would like to encourage all members to use IEEE PELS sponsored conferences, such as APEC, Intelec and the ECCE conferences as the major venues for disseminating and sharing our technology and research advancements