The 23rd International Conference & Exhibition on Electricity Distribution (CIRED) organized by the Association des Ingénieurs de Montiefiore will be held in the French city of Lyon. This major international biannual event follows on the record-breaking CIRED 2013 held in Stockholm. CIRED is now ranked as one of the world’s leading forums for the electricity community.
Lyon is a city in east-central France, in the Rhõne-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. It is a city with two rivers, the Rhõne and Saõne, and twin hilly districts of Fourvière, “the hill of prayers,” and Croix–Rousse, “the hill of workers.” Lyon is the home of the famous bouchon bistros, a capital of gastronomy, surrounded by vineyards known the world over and listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage site. All conference attendees will enjoy the city’s lively atmosphere and unforgettable monuments and contemporary buildings.
The conference and exhibition will be held in the Convention Center of Lyon, which is part of the Cité Internationale, which offers a unique and elegant silhouette between the Rhõne and the Parc de la Tête d’Or. Luminous, transparent and functional, this city in a city, with its buildings following the curve of the river, offers a completely new concept of urban development serving both the environment and economic growth.
The technical program at CIRED 2015 will present the challenging business, customer and political demands that cover every aspect of electricity distribution. The program will present contributions from all sectors of the utility industry and, therefore, it is of extreme interest to delegates from utilities, regulators, manufacturers, consultants, universities and research institutions from around the globe.
As a measure of the increasing international representation of successive CIRED conferences, this year the technical committee received 1,626 abstracts from 54 countries, from which the committee has selected 832 papers for presentation in at least one of the main features included in the three-day conference program.
Technical Program
The technical program, arranged jointly by the organizing and technical committees, will include three days of presentations and discussions led by expert chairmen and rapporteurs, poster sessions, roundtables, a series of tutorials and a high-level opening forum. The three-day technical program will include one-day sessions on each of the six main conference specialist themes:
- Network components
- Power quality and electromagnetic compatibility
- Operation, control and protection
- Distributed energy resources (DERs) and active demand integration
- Planning of power distribution systems
- Challenges of DSO regulation and competitive market.
The six tutorials will be held on Monday, June 15 prior to the opening forum. Places are limited and must be booked in advance. Tutorials are run in parallel so delegates can choose only one to attend:
- Harmonics in distribution networks
- Advanced distribution management system applications
- Protection of distribution networks
- Power-line communications for smart metering
- Probabilistic methods in modern electricity distribution systems
- Co-simulation of power systems and ICT: fundamentals and applications.
Opening Forum
The opening ceremony will be held on Monday, June 15 in the main auditorium of the Lyon Convention amphitheater.
- Theodor Connor, chairman of CIRED, will talk about Lyon as a European leader in the fields of local energy policies and smart cities.
- Philippe Monloubou, CEO of ERDF, will discuss power distribution at the heart of the energy transition.
- Frédéric Abal, chairman of Gimelec, will share how equipment manufacturers and solution providers prepare the future of power distribution.
- Dr. Hiroshi Okamoto, general manager of Tokyo Electric Power Corp., will give the Japanese perspective on power distribution and smart grids.
- Yves Tyrode, chief digital officer of SNCF, and Christian Buchel, chief digital officer of ERDF, will address the digital revolution and its impact on the distribution sector.
The opening forum will be followed by the welcome reception in the exhibition halls.
The 16 roundtable sessions will give delegates the opportunity to participate in discussions with industry professionals on selected topics:
- Smart distribution system operation for maximizing the integration of renewable generation
- Telecommunication solutions for smart grids
- Middle earth: Bringing operation in planning introducing planning into operation
- SF6 substitution: alternative gases
- Efficiency at component versus system level
- Smart secondary substations
- Implementation and roll-out of innovative DER grid integration solutions
- Responsibility of distribution grid operators for system services
- Testing methods and considerations for smarter network equipment — ICT control operation
- Protection systems in network with low level of short-
- circuit power
- The use of energy storage to alleviate distribution network constraints
- Future regulation for necessary and effective investment
- Power quality and EMC in the future grid
- Information and data management to support active customer and energy transformation
- Reliability benchmarking and continuity of supply
- National and international smart grid road maps.
- The daily poster sessions are linked to the technical program themes. Delegates also will benefit from well-structured, prearranged guided tours that offer the opportunity to meet and have in-depth discussions with every author.
The technical program concludes on Friday, June 19 with five technical visits:
- Alstom medium-voltage laboratories and the Supergrid Institute in Villeurbanne
- Nexans Production Unit
- Research Centre – Schneider Electric (Grenoble)
- ERDF – Lyon Confluence district tour (including a visit to a primary substation) and the Linky Hypervision Centre
- Saint Bonnet de Mure – Mersen Electric Power Facility.
International Exhibition
The international industry exhibition has attracted a record number of manufacturers and service providers from around the world who collectively supply distribution utilities with all the major components and a range of services. The exhibitors participating in this year’s exhibition supply the distribution utilities major plant, underground cables, overhead line equipment, diagnostic testing and fault location equipment in addition to the software for applications ranging from asset management to distribution monitoring systems. This exhibition offers delegates the opportunity to benefit and share knowledge and experience with world experts responsible for meeting the demanding challenges currently faced by the electricity industry.
CIRED 2015 is set to establish more records in terms of the delegates and visitors traveling from all parts of the world to Lyon in June. The technical program will be the largest ever staged, and the exhibition will include more exhibitors than at previous CIRED conferences.
