IEEE Power & Energy Society (PES) General Meeting is an annual event that combines meetings of some of the committees that belong to the PES, plenary session, technical and poster sessions, tutorials and other activities. Industry experts from all over the world attend the meeting.

PES President Wanda Reder first chaired the PES Members Meeting and then was the moderator of the Plenary session. The keynote speaker Kurt Yeager talked about "The Path to Perfect Power".  Seven Super Sessions included series of presentations exploring the subject of the session from different perspectives. Experts from different PES technical committees addressed subjects of interest to the electric power industry. All of the super sessions had focus on the issues related to the transition towards a Smart Grid. The seven topics were:

• Going green
• Transmission capacity enhancement in the 21st century
• Wind power
• Integrating distributed generation
• Training the future workforce for the electric power and energy industry
• Regulator and public challenges to utility enhancement
• Smart grid

Technical paper and panel sessions were scheduled Monday through Thursday.  Papers accepted for presentation at the conference were presented at three types of sessions:

• Poster sessions
• Poster forum - this is a new form, mixture of a short five minute presentation by each paper author, followed by poster session style discussions
• Paper sessions

Many papers of interest to the protection, automation and control community were presented during the sessions included in the different tracks. One paper sessions and three paper forum sessions were dedicated to electric power systems protection.

Five full day tutorials and one half-day tutorial complemented the rich technical program of the conference. One on "Substation automation" covered the impact of IEC 61850 and new requirements on security on substation automation.

The IEEE Fellows reception,  the Awards luncheon  and the technical tours were other important events held as part of the program.

The participants were offered a visit to the Calgary Energy Center - a 300 MW combined cycle power plant and two of the oldest TransAlta hydro facilities on Bow River - the Horseshoe (commissioned in 1911) and the Kananaskis (1913) run-off-river hydro plants.