The 8^th  IEEE Power Africa 2021 Conference (PAC 2021) welcomes and encourages the proposal of special sessions focusing on specific topics within the main objectives of the conference. Indeed, in addition to the regular sessions, special sessions will helps authors to submit papers, which can cover related topics to the conference under subjects or cross-subjects of specific interests of innovation, updated research topics, current novel projects and new advance such as:

• Renewable energy resources their topologies, system control and applications;
• Electric transportation, energy harvesting and storage technologies
• Smart grids and micro-grids
• Smart metering and IoT
• Energy efficiency at all levels
• New challenges in power systems concerning planning, energy pricing policies, and retail markets
• Challenges in  autonomous, rural, urban power systems
• Challenges and opportunities of accessible power, privatization, policy, and tariffs
• Challenges in electrical grid safety and protection
• Power electronic converters and their topologies, control systems and applications
• Electric machines and their control
• Materials in semiconductor, dielectric and magnetic
• FACTS, power quality, EMI and EMC

All interested researchers or academics who would like to propose and organize a special session or workshop, should send their Special Sessions/workshop proposal to the Chairs of the of special sessions at : kouzouabdellah@ieee.org .

All proposal have to be submitted using the Special Session TEMPLATE or Workshop TEMPLATE.

Complete proposal includes the following information:

1. Title of the Special Session
2. The number of one special session organizers is not limited but preferred from at least two countries.
3. The full names, affiliations and contact information of all the special session organizers should be provided.
4. A short abstract describing the covered specific topic in (between 200 to 300 words). This abstract has to be ended with the answer of the main question: Why you believe that the proposal is a significant and interesting subject to the conference?
5. A list of sub-topics related to the proposal.
6. A list of potential authors and their affiliations who are expected to participate in this special session (not less than 10)
7. A list of international potential reviewers and their affiliations (at least 10, but not all from the same country)

Organization of special sessions

8. The proposal of Special Session will be reviewed by the Chairs of special sessions and the decision of approval will be provided to the organizers in less than 15 working days. Once the proposal is accepted and approved, it is the responsibility of the organizers to disseminate, distribute and publicize their Special Session (SS) among academics, students, researchers, industry and practitioners interested by the proposed topic of the SS to attract a sufficient number of submissions.

The organizers of the Special session should follow scrupulously the rules of organizing a special session within PAC 2021:

• The special session should contain six (06) accepted papers from at least three different universities, institute, industries entities etc. On the same time the accepted papers should be at least from two countries. Any Special session will fail to collect this number, the accepted papers will be moved to regular sessions.
• The registration process is the same as for regular papers.
• The special session cannot accept submission of more than two papers, which are co-authored by more than 50% of the same author.
• The review process will be the responsibility of the organizers of the special session and with following up by the Chairs of special sessions for the guarantee of the papers quality. However, the review process will undergo through the same process as regular papers and the reviewers should not have any contact or interest with the authors of the paper.
• In case of conflict of interest, means if the special session organizer have paper co-authored by them, the review should be in a strict way where the review should chose in a way to avoid such conflict. The chairs of the special sessions intervene in this case.
• The total percentage of the papers co-authored by at least one of the organizers should not at any way exceed 60%.
• All special session papers are presented as one or more oral sessions where each oral session should not include more than six papers.

Important:

• A free registration will be granted to the organizers of a successful special session for every 5 papers not co-authored by any author among the organizers. This free registration can be used by the organizers fully or divided among two or more organizers based on 100% of one free full registration (as an example two organizer can benefit from 50% discount for each for one paper to each).
• During the conference the successful special session will be organized with the oral sessions, which will be chaired by the organizers who will attend the conference.
• If the organizer will not be able to attend the conference, the Chairs of the special sessions will delegate a colleague to chair the mentioned oral sessions.
• The rule of publication in the proceeding of the conference of the papers of the special session will obey to the same rules of the regular papers.

Special Session Proposal Deadline:  May 1, 2021

 For any further information or enquiries concerning the organization of a special session please contact kouzouabdellah@ieee.org