Abstracts:Provides society information that may include news, reviews or technical notes that should be of interest to practitioners and researchers.

Abstracts:Provides society information that may include news, reviews or technical notes that should be of interest to practitioners and researchers.

Abstracts:Provides society information that may include news, reviews or technical notes that should be of interest to practitioners and researchers.

Abstracts:Recounts the career and contributions of Clayton H. Reid.

Abstracts:This article illustrates the updates on the Horizon Europe (HEU) NEWGEN research project 24 months after its beginning. The goal of the HEU-NEWGEN project is the development and validation of a new generation of extruded high-voltage (HVdc) cable systems, encompassing new insulating materials, novel manufacturing, monitoring and diagnostics techniques, and dedicated models for the estimation of the life and reliability of the whole cable system. The encouraging advances of the NEWGEN project amid its expected duration appear as very promising. For this reason, the sought generation of HVdc cables seems capable of fostering the resilience and reliability of the European transmission grid.

Abstracts:This article presents a robust solution based on an IEEE 802.15.4 Internet Protocol v6 (IPv6) over low-power wireless personal area networks (6LoWPAN) mesh-type network protocol for Internet of Things (IoT)-based power-constrained devices. Previous solutions for smart city communication infrastructures were based on star-shaped networks using long range (LoRA) and mesh-type networks following the Zigbee standard. Nevertheless, neither solution could be deemed the most suitable for large-scale deployments in smart cities, as they were unsuitable for lossy environments or lacked proper robustness. The proposed solution, which also offers a unique opportunity to use lighting devices as access points in a broader smart city backbone, has been tested in the city of Gijón, Spain, where 60% of the conventional streetlight luminaires were replaced or retrofitted by smart lighting devices, totaling nearly 20,000 lighting points. Retrofitting was used in cases where the lamp design could not be replaced. While the former structure was maintained, internal nodes were fitted with modern LED drivers. The communication protocol allows full control of the connected luminaires, and a dimming profile was implemented in different parts of the city. Results show seamless integration between the central management system (CMS) and the smart city environment, along with a reduction in energy consumption of nearly 25%. The network design also provides insightful feedback to identify the system’s performance. Extending this solution to smart metering applications requiring near-real-time data processing with a small to moderate data rate offers a reliable and cost-effective application for backbone infrastructure using lighting poles as access points.

Abstracts:IEEE Standard 1584-2018 provides models and an analytical process to enable the calculation of the predicted incident thermal energy and the arc-flash boundary. The guide includes the dimensions and working distances for the different types of electrical equipment evaluated in the arc-flash incident energy (IE) tests used to create the model. The equipment used in these tests were manufactured to ANSI/National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) standards. This article highlights the differences when applying the IEEE Standard 1584-2018 models and analytical processes to equipment manufactured to International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standards.

Abstracts:Synchronous motors are vital assets in many industrial processes. Although they typically require more complex controls and maintenance than standard induction motors, synchronous motors provide operational benefits that often render them the preferred driver for numerous specialized manufacturing and processing applications. This article presents a practical example of a control solution that enables automatic excitation regulation of a synchronous motor field winding. That is, a microprocessor-based motor protection relay that provides a closed-loop feedback control signal to a silicon-controlled rectifier (SCR) exciter to automatically regulate the excitation supply current, enabling automatic regulation of the motor’s power factor (PF) and efficiency. In addition, this article discusses the various lessons learned during the update as well as the associated start-up commissioning of an aged excitation control system to the aforementioned solution for two synchronous motors driving ball mills in a large cement plant.