The 2nd ICPERE, Bali, 9-11 Desember 2014
The 2nd IEEE Conference on Power Engineering and Renewable Energy (ICPERE) 2014 is a biennial routine event organized by ITB through the Electrical Engineering and Informatics Research Group (KK Ketenagalistrikan) of the School of Electrical Engineering and Informatics ITB in collaboration with IEEE. This year's event is the second implementation after the inauguration in 2012. In this implementation, ICPERE 2014 was held on December 9-11, 2014, at the Grand Inna Kuta Hotel, Bali.
According to the chairman of the ICPERE 2014 organizing committee, Dr. Ir. Pekik Argo Dahono, ICPERE 2014 is intended as a means of communication for academics and industry practitioners in the field of electricity and renewable energy, as well as bridging communication between academics and practitioners in Indonesia with experts from abroad. It was recorded that representatives from 12 countries participated in ICPERE 2014, including Algeria, Turkey, China, France, India, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Norway, Canada, and of course Indonesia. Not only from university academics, electricity industry practitioners also participated in presenting the latest technological developments at ICPERE 2014, including MTU Onsite Energy, NR Electric, PT. PLN, and PT. LEN Industri.
ICPERE 2014 is an international seminar designed to provide a balanced portion of technical sessions and plenary sessions. In the three days of the event, the morning to lunch sessions always present presentations from experts in the plenary sessions followed by presentations from speakers who submitted their papers to ICPERE 2014 in three parallel rooms. It is no surprise that there are 13 keynote lectures during the three days of ICPERE 2014 covering fields ranging from power electronics, electrical machines, high voltage engineering, power generation, microgrids, to the policies and plans of the Indonesian government regarding electricity. In addition to Indonesia, keynote speakers come from abroad including France, Japan, South Korea, Turkey, and Canada.
total of 101 papers were submitted to ICPERE 2014, with only 61 accepted for presentation at the seminar. The acceptance rate of only 0.6 indicates a fairly stringent selection process at ICPERE 2014 through a review process. Of the 61 papers accepted, the portion of foreign speakers reached 54%, while the portion of domestic speakers was only 46%. This indicates that the level of local participation still needs to be improved. Furthermore, of the 46% local participation, approximately 80% is still dominated by publications from ITB itself.
ICPERE 2014 was considered quite successful, with a wealth of information and camaraderie emerging throughout the event. However, much work remains to be done to encourage more active participation from local Indonesian participants. ICPERE is envisioned as a regular international conference under the IEEE umbrella, particularly for the Asia Pacific region. Several friendly countries, such as South Korea, have offered to host ICPERE in future editions. This positive initiative needs to be further pursued to develop ICPERE into a high-quality, internationally recognized seminar.