This year's banquet will be held on Monday, Oct. 2, 2023, at McCrory Gardens in Brookings.
Program
5:30 p.m. - Social
6 p.m. - Banquet
6:45 p.m. - Presentation of the CPSS Scholarship
- Presentation of Wayne E. Knabach Excellence in Power Award
7 p.m. - Keynote Presentation
Excellence in Power Awardee
Robert H. Schulte
Principal, Schulte Associates LLC
Managing Member, Power from the Prairie LLC
Bob Schulte has more than 40 years in the utility business, serving as an officer in both public and investor-owned utilities. He holds a B.S. in electrical engineering from SDSU, and an M.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Missouri-Columbia. During 16 years at Northern States Power (NSP), among other things he was lead planning engineer for planning and permitting for the 800 MW Sherburne County 3 power plant now in operation near Becker, Minnesota. He led the original development of the first nine major customer energy efficiency and interruptible load programs in the Upper Midwest, later versions of which are still in operation today. He led installation of the fourth-240 MVA, 115/13.8kV transformer under the Nicollet Mall serving downtown Minneapolis. He led regulatory cost recovery for decommissioning the Pathfinder nuclear power plant in Sioux Falls. As VP of rates and corporate strategy, he was responsible for development of the first Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) filing in Minnesota including, for the first time in company history, direct customer input. He led NSP senior officer decisions to install the first 10 Megawatts of large-scale wind facilities in the Upper Midwest, where thousands of MW are in operation today.
During the past 28 years in private practice at Schulte Associates LLC, an executive management consulting firm in Raleigh, North Carolina, he has served energy industry clients in resource planning, project development, organizational development and interim CEO/COO services. He used to plan and permit coal and nuclear plants. Now, he plans renewables, transmission and storage to replace them. He is the author of numerous industry articles on energy storage and interregional transmission. As managing member of Power from the Prairie (PftP) LLC, he is leading efforts to develop the 4,000 MW PftP interregional HVDC transmission line from Wyoming to Iowa. Many of the Participants in the recently completed Stage 1 PftP Concept Development Study (CDS) are CPSS members. Study report.
Bob lives in Raleigh. He recently served on the SDSU Foundation Council of Trustees. His daughter, Nikki Brower, is lead designer for the Brookings Register newspaper. His daughter, Melissa Schulte, is an advertising strategist for the Henkin/Schultz ad firm in Sioux Falls. The Schulte Family is SDSU Family of the Year for 2023, featuring 14 Jackrabbit grads since his father, H.J. Schulte, was all-conference for the Jacks in basketball 90 years ago before serving as head of the T&D Department for Northwestern Public Service in Huron for 20 years.
CPSS Scholarship Awardee
Shelby, originally from Watertown, Minnesota, is the daughter of Noah and Nicole Mueller. During her time at SDSU, Shelby has attained a GPA of 3.3. She has been involved in improving freshmen classes as both a teaching assistant for their introductory to electrical engineering lab and a tutor for Circuits I. Shelby also has been involved with the IEEE student branch, as the secretary. She has interned for Burns and McDonnell for the past two years and will be returning as a full-time engineer in training in their substation department.
Keynote Presentation
Dr. Tmothy Hansen
Dr. Junjian Qi
South Dakota State University
Power System Modeling, Control, and Resilience with Power Electronics Interfaced Renewable Generation
Biography:
Timothy M. Hansen (IEEE Senior Member 2020) received the B.S. degree in computer engineering with high honors from the Milwaukee School of Engineering, Milwaukee, WI, USA, in 2011, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA, in 2015. He is currently an Associate Professor with the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, South Dakota State University, Brookings, SD, USA. His research interests are in the application of optimization, high-performance/edge computing, and electricity markets to the areas of sustainable power and energy systems, low-inertia power systems, smart cities, and cyber-physical-social systems.
Abstract:
The SDSU Microgrid Laboratory and Power and Energy program have undergone transformational changes in the last few years. Current PowerJacks’ faculty will first describe the state of the undergraduate and graduate program focused on electric power systems at SDSU, including a description of the new capabilities of the research and teaching capabilities of the laboratory.
Prof. Tim Hansen will then discuss recent advancements in dynamic modeling of power systems with a large penetration of power electronic converter (PEC) interfaced energy sources. Data-driven methods will be shown for model extraction of commercial-off-the-shelf smart inverters implementing the IEEE 1547-2019 standard using Microgrid Laboratory equipment. The data-driven models can be used to study and mitigate voltage and frequency stability issues caused by the integration of PEC-based resources in the electric power grid.
Finally, the newest PowerJacks’ faculty, Prof. Junjian Qi, will end the keynote presentation with an overview of his research background in the area of power system resilience and control: cascading failure analysis and mitigation based on real utility outage data, application-level cyber-physical system security, and advanced inverter and microgrid control for integration of power electronics interfaced renewable generation.
Dr. Junjian Qi (IEEE Senior Member 2017) received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China in 2013. He was a Research Associate with University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 2013-2015, a Postdoctoral Appointee with Argonne National Laboratory in 2015-2017, an Assistant Professor with University of Central Florida in 2017-2020, and an Assistant Professor with Stevens Institute of Technology in 2020-2023. He is currently the Hohbach Endowed Assistant Professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at South Dakota State University. His research interests include cascading blackouts, microgrid control, cyber-physical system security, and synchrophasors. Dr. Qi was the recipient of the NSF CAREER award in 2020. He also received the IEEE PES Technical Committee Working Group Recognition Award for Outstanding Technical Report, the 2021 Best Paper Award from IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, and Best Paper Awards from IEEE PES General Meeting and IEEE PES ISGT Asia.