The forum will briefly cover the power blackout on August 14, 2003, assess the current status, and examine the challenges involved in ensuring reliable operation of our power grid. Our speakers are key power industry experts from British Columbia, Québec, and Ontario (The IMO and Hydro One).

IEEE Toronto Section notes its appreciation and gratitude of these industry leaders in supporting our technical activities and our Centennial celebrations. We are delighted that we are able to organize this timely forum to review the August 2003 blackout, the major ice storm in Quebec and various utility inter-tie practices at AC and DC transmission. We encourage our members and guests to attend this forum that will span two and a half hours and have a better understanding of our grid reliability and lessons learned from operating such a complex network in today's competitive environment.

This event is one of the ways in which the IEEE Toronto Section and its Power Engineering Chapter provide opportunities for members of the power industry and the general public to explore significant issues, generate greater understanding, and contribute to improved engineering excellence. For high quality background information about the blackout, read the report entitled "August 14, 2003 Outage Sequence of Events" by the NERC U.S./Canada Power Outage Task Force and issued on September 12, 2003. This report was downloaded from the public NERC web site and is available as a 14 page PDF file from the IEEE Toronto web site at: http://toronto.ieee.ca/chapters/power/nerc_on_blackout.pdf.

Dan Rochester is a Professional Engineer working with the IMO since its inception in 1999. As a member of the IMO's Long Term Forecasts and Assessments Department since 2000, Dan manages the section responsible for the production of the IMO's 10-Year and 18-Month generation and transmission reliability outlooks as well as supporting the Northeast Power Coordinating Council and North American Reliability Council assessments. The Outlooks provide electricity market participants, and other interested stakeholders, with the IMO's assessment of the future reliability of the Ontario electricity system with the intent of providing signals for investment and operational behaviour.

Dan is currently a member of the Northeast Power Coordinating Council's Resource Adequacy Working Group and a former member of their Control Performance Working Group. Prior to 1999, Dan was employed by Ontario Hydro for 24 years, in a number of operational, marketing and engineering roles in the Power Systems Operations Division and at two fossil generating stations.

Jim Lee is a professional engineer working in Hydro One Networks Inc. He manages the bulk transmission system planning activities for the Hydro One Networks' system in the northern and eastern Ontario including the interconnections with Quebec, Manitoba and Minnesota.

He has been with Hydro One Networks, formally Ontario Hydro, for 26 years working mostly in the bulk and local area system planning. He led the investigation of the August 14 blackout in Hydro One Networks Inc. He is also leading the joint technical investigation with Manitoba Hydro on the high capacity Ontario-Manitoba interconnection.

Jean-Marie Gagnon is a professional engineer with a master's degree in electrical engineering from l'École Polytechnique de Montréal (University of Montreal). He is currently working at Hydro-Québec Trans-Énergie in power system planning and has been with Hydro-Québec for the past 31 years.

During this time, he has held various positions in bulk and local-area power system planning. He was recently appointed Manager of Interconnected Networks, responsible for assessing the need, development and realisation of new interconnection projects with TransÉnergie's neighbouring networks. He is also responsible for proposing projects to improve the existing transfer capacity of established interconnections.

In addition to having taken part in several studies and projects related to the expansion of Hydro-Québec's transmission system, notably the Québec-New England Multiterminal ±450 kV HVDC Line, Mr. Gagnon has represented Hydro-Québec for more than 10 years on the Northeast Power Coordinating Councils (the "NPCC's") Task Force on Systems Studies. He is also presently representing TransÉnergie as a member of the NPCC Reliability Coordinating Committee.

Mr. Gagnon is representing also CEA at the Planning Committee of NERC and is a member of IEEE.

Dr. Kundur holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Toronto and has over 30 years of experience in the electric power industry. He is currently the President and CEO of Powertech Labs Inc., the research and technology subsidiary of BC Hydro. Prior to joining Powertech in 1993, he worked at Ontario Hydro for 25 years and was involved in the planning, design and operation of power systems.

He has served as Adjunct Professor at the University of Toronto since 1979 and at the University of British Columbia since 1994. He is the author of the book Power System Stability and Control (McGraw-Hill, 1994), which is a standard modern reference for the subject. He has performed extensive international consulting related to power system stability, and has delivered technical courses for utilities and universities around the world.

Dr. Kundur is a Fellow of the IEEE, and is currently Chair of the Power System Dynamic Performance Committee of the Power Engineering Society. He is also active in CIGRE and is currently the Chair of the Study Committee C-4 on "System Technical Performance". He is the recipient of the 1997 IEEE Nikola Tesla Award and the 1999 CIGRE Technical Committee Award. In 2003, he was inducted as a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineers.

Dr. Kundur is a member of the Board of Directors of PRECARN Inc., a Canadian industrial consortium supporting the development of intelligent systems technologies. He served as the Chair of the Board in 2002/2003.