International Conference on Power, Instrumentation, Energy and Control
Aligarh : “The students of engineering and technology need the right kind of training and mindset. We should have direct linkages with industries, and our students should focus on exploring MSMEs than MNCs”, said Prof. Mohammad Gulrez, Pro Vice Chancellor, Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), while inaugurating the three-day International Conference on Power, Instrumentation, Energy and Control (PIECON-2023) organized by the Department of Electrical Engineering, AMU.
Prof. Gulrez hoped that the conference will provide an excellent platform for the researchers to present their research work to a wide community of researchers working in different areas of Electrical Engineering.
The guest of honour Mr. Rizwanur Rehman (Executive Director, PFC, Ministry of Power, Govt. of India) presented an overview of continuous changes in the power sector in India. He said “in the 90s we focussed on transforming the mammoth state electricity boards into viable entities with state of art technologies. Later on we worked with Discoms in IT enabled interventions and other technologies”.
“Under the revamped distribution sector scheme an outlay of Rs. 303758 crore over a period of five years from 2021-22 to 2025-26 has been made with the objective to improve the quality, reliability and affordability of power supply to consumers”, he said.
Talking about India’s energy transition Mr. Rehman said, at the COP-26 summit in 2021, India pledged to achieve net-zero carbon emission by 2070, which involves reducing the transport, industrial and power plant emissions in the country. “India plans to switch to non-fossil fuel in the near future, and hopes to achieve an installed non-fossil fuel electricity capacity of 500 GW by 2030. Apart from that as part of the National Solar Mission, the government has set a target of achieving 300 GW of solar energy in India by 2030”, he added.
Prof M Altamush Siddiqui, Dean, Faculty of Engineering and Technology, said the topics being covered are of varied nature and new areas dealing with Power and energy systems, power electronics and drives, high voltage and insulation engineering, robotics, control, instrumentation and automation, biomedical engineering and healthcare technologies, signal and image processing, smart grid and smart city, renewable and sustainable energies, electrified transportation in air, space, sea, road and underwater, devices, circuits, an nano materials etc.
Prof MM Sufyan Beg, Principal, ZHCET, AMU said the electrical energy forms the backbone of the structure of modern society. However, at present the Indian energy sector is faced with myriad challenges which need to be addressed by the intelligentsia. “The Department of Electrical Engineering is playing a significant role in the enhancement of knowledge in the changing global scenario”, he added.
Prof Salman Hameed, Chairman, Department of Electrical Engineering said the department has successfully organized a number of training programmes, workshops, seminars and conferences in the past. The International Conference on Power, Instrumentation, Energy and Control (PIECON-2023) aims to provide a forum for persons from all over the country to network, share and discuss new researches and developments in emerging technological areas.
Prof Mohd Rihan, Conference Convener said the recent developments like Smart Grid, Advanced Sensing and Communications, Integration of Renewable energy sources and decarbonisation of power grid provide a perfect backdrop for a conference of such wide ranging areas of interest.
He further said: “our technical program is rich and varied with keynote, invited talks, and technical papers split between 15 broad tracks and 7 parallel sessions each day. We also expect to provide technical site visits and numerous opportunities for informal networking”.
He said around 400 papers for the conference out of which only 165 are finally being presented.
“AMU has contributed in a major way to the national mission on green energy by successfully setting up 6.5 MW capacity of solar energy in the campus” Prof Rihan added.
Later on, Prof Biswarup Das (IIT, Roorkee) spoke on “renewable energy integration: some perspective”.
Prof. Mohammad Fazle Azeem proposed the vote of thanks.
Ms. Mahina Mahmood and Javeria Sajid students of B.Tech conducted the programme.