Title: Climate Change, Adaption and Mitigation
Dr. Shay Bahramirad, 2024 PES President
Dr. Shay Bahramirad, Senior Vice President of T&D, Strategy, and Sustainability at LUMA Energy in Puerto Rico, is a prominent industry leader. She holds the role of President at IEEE Power and Energy Society, serves on the editorial board of the Electricity Journal, is a US CIGRE Executive member, an adjunct professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and a founder of IEEE Women in Power. Additionally, she contributes to the United Nations SG7 initiative for Affordable and Clean Energy. With a PhD in electrical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology, she boasts numerous academic publications and holds multiple US patents. Previously, as Vice President of Climate and Resilience at Quanta Technology, she guided cities and utilities in climate change risk assessments and investment strategies. Earlier, as Vice President of Engineering and Smart Grid at ComEd, she spearheaded efforts to ensure the distribution system’s reliability, resiliency, and sustainability, while fostering a community of the future vision inclusive of STEM education for underrepresented groups, particularly girls. Dr. Shay Bahramirad is also recognized as an expert witness in state and federal regulatory proceedings concerning microgrids, energy storage, investment strategies, and distributed energy resources interconnection.
Title: Navigating the Intersections of Economic Growth and Environmental Responsibility in Energy
Tan Sri Abdul Razak bin Abdul Majid
Tan Sri Abdul Razak bin Abdul Majid was appointed as Non-Independent Non-Executive Chairman of Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB), effective 27 March 2023. He brings along 50 years of work experience spanning over the whole range of supply chain activities in the energy industry.
He currently serves as a member of the Action Committee for the establishment of the National Energy Center at UNITEN since 2022 and Independent Advisory Panel of Malaysian Petroleum Resources Corporation (MPRC), an entity under the Ministry of Economy, to oversee the development and sustainability of the services companies of the oil & gas sector since 2021. Dato’ Abdul Razak had also served as an Independent Non-Executive Director of Petronas Gas Berhad (PGB) from 2018 to 2023.
He has held various leadership roles in the energy industry, including Chairman of the Energy Commission of Malaysia (2014-2018) and CEO of MyPOWER Corporation for two terms, 2009-2014 and 2018-2020. Over his tenure in MyPOWER Corporation and Energy Commission, he presided over a range of reform initiatives for the Malaysian Electricity Supply Industry (MESI), mainly arising out of the outcome of recommendations from MyPOWER studies. These included streamlining of capacity planning processes, competitive procurement of generation capacities for both conventional and renewable facilities as well as other other initiatives such as the establishment of ringed-fenced Single Buyer & Grid System Operator entities within the incumbent utility and Incentive-Based Regulation (IBR) framework incorporating fuel cost pass-through mechanism as the tariff setting mechanism for both electricity and gas supply networks. He also guided through the enactment of the Third-Party Access (TPA) framework for the electricity and gas supply industries.
For 36 years, he had served in planning, construction, and operation roles across Lembaga Letrik Negara (LLN) and TNB’s core Divisions, ultimately served as the Company’s Vice President (Generation) and Senior Vice President (Corporate Affairs). He was also seconded to the Economic Planning Unit of the Prime Minister’s Department (1998-2001) to assist in the studies and assessment on the prospects of the restructuring of the Malaysia Electricity Supply Industry, under the Review of Services Sector Program by the agency.
Tan Sri Abdul Razak bin Abdul Majid graduated in Electrical Engineering from Brighton University, UK and holds Masters in Business Administration from Ohio University, USA.
Title: Smart Grid, key success factors and it’s influence towards Energy Transition
Prof. Ir. Dr. Izham Zainal Abidin
Izham Zainal Abidin is a senior member of IEEE Power and Energy Society Malaysia chapter. He is a Professional Engineer where he received his B.Eng (Hons) in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southampton, United Kingdom in 1997 and PhD (Electrical Engineering) degree from University of Strathclyde, United Kingdom in 2002 respectively. His research interests include Power System Steady State Analysis, Fuzzy Decision Tree approaches towards Power System Voltage Stability Analysis, Voltage Stability, Electrical Islanding and most recently research into realizing Smart Grid technologies for Smart Cities. Currently, he is the Deputy Vice Chancellor Academic & International and a Professor in the Department of Electrical & Electronics Engineering, Universiti Tenaga Nasional (UNITEN), Malaysia. He is also an active member of the Institute of Power Engineering and an affiliate member to the Institute of Energy Infrastructure and Institute for Energy Policy and Research, UNITEN. Throughout his career he has involved in various research projects and consultancy projects related to power system stability analysis, renewable energy integration and reverse power flow, virtual reality implementation towards electrical equipment maintenance processes, electrical islanding studies and its related optimization process and Smart Grid implementation analysis from the purview of Policy, Regulatory Framework, capacity building, awareness programme, scale-up and replicability plans. In addition to power system research, he is also active in looking into digital learning and its related technologies specifically for undergraduate teaching and learning approaches.