Conference Reports News

PAC World Americas Conference 2022

The event was held 22-25 August 2022 at the Raleigh Convention Center, Raleigh, NC, USA.

After two years of virtual events the annual PAC World Americas conference was held in-person.

The opening of the conference was followed by the Keynote address on “Protection Challenges of the Carbon Free Grid, ” presented by Paul Myrda, Grid Operations and Planning Senior Program Manager with the Electric Power Research Institute, USA.

The two-and-a-half days conference program included 52 papers presented in single sessions and covering a wide range of topics.

As is a tradition for all PAC World conferences – there were no parallel sessions. The authors of the papers were from many countries from all over the world. The papers were presented in the paper sessions including 15 min presentations followed by a discussion of all the papers at the end of each session.

The papers covered a wide range of topics related to the evolution of electric power systems protection and control technologies, the developments in the implementation of IEC 61850 in digital substations, distribution automation and system integrity protection schemes. A number of papers were focused on various aspects of cyber security, while others talked about testing of protection and control devices and systems.

The traditional “Ask the experts” panel was the last session in the conference program. The interactive discussion gave again a wonderful opportunity to the participants to address a wide range of questions submitted in advance or raised during the session. The session was made even more exciting by a special microphone that was flying from one end of the room to another.

During the breaks the participants visited the exhibition and discussed with the vendors’ representatives the latest technology and its applications.

As already has become a tradition, the “PAC Demo Hour +” was held at the end of the conference program on Tuesday providing an additional demo session when participating exhibitors had an extended interaction with participants in a relaxed atmosphere. 

The social program of the conference included the Welcome reception on Monday evening at the Flying Saucer pub in Raleigh.

The gala dinner took place at the Architect Bar & Social House, which offered a unique environment and excellent menu. This was followed by the photo competition awards ceremony and a lot of fun with a comedian.