International Workshop on Power System Operation and Planning will be held in Cape Town, South Africa Fall 2004 (ICPSOP 2004/2006)

Howard University, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

This grant supports the organization of the first ICPSOP international workshop devoted to discussing "Sustainable Energy and Technology Development in Sub-Sahara Africa in the 21st Century". This multi-year workshop will be in two phases and will bring together energy experts, researchers, and university scholars and students, as well as policy makers and market players. The ICPSOP 2004 workshop is the first phase and will be hosted by South Africa. The workshop will strengthen and enhance the search for sustainable energy options that will improve the quality of life. The power infrastructure (the grid network, generation and distributed generation resources) with its vertical organization of all utility companies is now being replaced by a decentralized structure to induce and promote competition at all stages of energy generation, transmission and distribution. The 2006 workshop is the second phase and will be held in Cape Verde. The workshop will address the joint research collaboration efforts in energy, environment and information technology made by US and African researchers. Subsequent research results will also be presented at the workshop. Globally, various countries are at different stages of restructuring the power sector or studying the impacts of renewable energy, environmental issues and information technology on designing for a deregulated or regulated electricity industry. With the emergence of the competitive environment, a sustainable technology must be assessed, developed, deployed and utilized in the planning operations of the power system. These new challenges have been addressed, or are being addressed currently, in varying ways in different parts of the world. In the last few years, the countries of Sub-Sahara Africa have engaged in several options for energy sustainability, economics and provision of enabling environments for high performance power systems. The objective of this proposal is to organize a workshop to address these challenges by offering an improved focus for US-African researchers already engaged in joint collaborative research efforts in the last 2 years. The intellectual merits of the proposal include: Promotion of renewable energy sources for sustainable quality of life and civilization, advancing the use of intelligent systems, hybrid intelligent systems, as well as heuristic methods, for enhancing the reliability of the power system. Identification of necessary control applications for power electronics technology for improving the electric transmission system. Gaming or risk management and hedging for market operations and dynamics. Improvement of the quality of generation, transmission and distribution resources using state-of-the-art technology.