John D. McDonald, director of technical strategy and policy development for General Electric, will be the featured speaker at the upcoming Smart-Grid Workshop USW 2011 on the campus of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
The free workshop will be held in the UTC University Center auditorium on Wednesday, Oct. 12. The day begins with registration at 8 a.m. before the first session at 9 a.m.
In his position at GE, McDonald is responsible for setting the vision that integrates GE standards participation and Digital Energy's industry organization participation. He has received the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' Millennium Medal, IEEE Excellence in Power Distribution Engineer Awards, and chaired the 2010-2011 NIST Smart Grid Interoperability Panel Governing Board. He also teaches a Smart Grid course at Georgia Institute of Technology.
Breakout-session topics will include Smart-Grid Perspectives, Lessons Learned from Smart-Grid Deployments and Recent Catastrophe. McDonald will be featured in the 1:15 p.m. keynote speech on "Smart-Grid Concepts, Standards and Recent Deployments."
The final event of the day will be a 3:30 p.m. panel discussion on "Is Smart Grid on Track or Losing Momentum?" Panelists will include McDonald, Dr. Mohammed Shahidehpour, David Wade, Erich Gunther, Bruce Rogers and Jim Sheffered.
Anyone wishing to register should contact workshop organizer Dr. Raziq Yaqub at 425-4373 or raziq-yaqub@utc.edu.