There are a lot of opportunities in 2026 to get some training and I am interested in your opinions to help me explore new conferences. The two best that I have attended in the past are the Minnesota Power Systems Conference (MIPSYCON) and the Energy System Integration Group (ESIG). This is from the power systems engineering relevant learning standpoint.
Both of these conferences have up-to-date and relevant topics to industry professionals. The IEEE/CIGRE is pretty good, but you experience more theoretical implementation vs industry experience. Also the speed of 15 minutes per paper makes it hard to go into a subject.
EUCI holds high-quality virtual events throughout the year and provides CEUs for many different licensures. After the event there’s options for on-demand learning.
NATF holds an annual modeling practices group meeting in November. They offer hybrid attendance and there are always a wealth of interesting presentations. The announcement for that conference will come later in the year.
I know you mentioned not liking IEEE GM/T&D but I find that to be extremely valuable for networking with utilities, consultants, and OEMs from all backgrounds all in one place. I’m limited to a single trip a year and have always used it on IEEE because it’s such a good all-rounder. I agree that the research presentations at just 15 minutes can be rough to get into the weeds but the possibility of walking up after the presentation and talking to the author makes up for it.
I attended IEEE PES, and it was nice. I will be attending TED for the first time this year (I am part of a panel). ESIG is one that I have been eyeing but haven't attended yet, and Minnesota—I had heard about it but never really looked into it—I'll have to do so this year.
Any thoughts on conferences like NAPS, TPEC, Southeast Energy Conference?
How exciting Gad! What is your panel? I'm doing a tutorial titled Integrating Inverter-Based Resources and Large Loads: Modeling, Challenges, and Grid Reliability. I would love to catch your panel afterwards!