CURENT Seminar Series: Mr. Bob Cummings, NERC
Date: Thursday, October 5, 2017
Time: 12:20 – 1:10pm EST
Location: Room 124 Min H. Kao Building, Knoxville, TN
Title: Engineering the Changing Resource Mix – Keeping the Grid Together
Presenter: Mr. Bob Cummings, Senior Director of Engineering and Reliability Initiatives, NERC
Abstract: Mr. Cummings will discuss the following subjects,
- The changing resources and changing loads
- Inverter-Based Disturbances
- Changing Inertia and Frequency Response
- Potential Roles for Energy Storage
- Other Frequency Developments
Bio: Mr. Cummings joined NERC in 1996 and has extensive experience in the industry in system planning, operations engineering, and wide-area planning. He holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Power System Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and is an IEEE Senior Member.
He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of CURENT (Center for Ultra-wide Area Resilient Electric Energy Transmission Networks), a National Science Foundation and Department of Energy Engineering Research Center.
His geographically diverse experience includes Central Vermont Public Service Corporation in System Planning (generation and transmission), Public Service Company of New Mexico in Operations Engineering and Wide-area Planning, and the East Central Area Reliability Coordination Agreement (ECAR) regional office of NERC as the Manager of Transmission Services.
He was a principal investigator of the 2003 Northeast Blackout and the more recent Arizona-Southern California Outage of September 8, 2011, leading multiple event analysis teams in the sequence of events development, modeling and studies (powerflow and dynamics analysis), and transmission/generation performance areas. He directed the NERC Event Analysis program for five years, leading or working on 12 major system disturbance analyses.
Mr. Cummings is the “father” of power interchange transaction “tagging” and the Interchange Distribution Calculator for the Eastern Interconnection, which is known as the Enhanced Curtailment Calculator in the Western Electricity Coordination Council.