A short initial comment about myself and this blog

Welcome to my blog. Having this blog has been on my mind for a while. I am an Assistant Professor at The University of Texas at Austin. These are exciting times in my area of interest: electric power and energy (EPE). Although EPE infrastructures are a fundamental basis for modern societies, technology development in EPE has not received, traditionally, as much attention as other areas. As a result, what once was the most complex, modern, and reliable human-made engineering system, the electric power grid, is now a complex, but aging and unreliable system showing significant signs of stress. However, the search for solutions to the current energy crisis through, for example, utilizing renewable sources or developing hybrid electric cars, and the development of what is called an "smart grid" have renewed the interest in the EPE world.

These changes are also accompanied by new ways of communicating, quite different from the traditional papers find in academia. I see a blog as a complementary way of discussing issues of interest, more dynamic but certainly less exact than papers. In a way a blog could become a continuous virtual conference coffee break where different topics can be discussed and commented as they happen. Hence, the ultimate goal is that this blog becomes an informal public forum in which aspects of electric power and energy generation, conversion, storage, and use could be openly explored. In the future, I am planning to discuss many issues, from technical and scientific aspects (e.g. ac vs. dc power), to social and historic views, of course within the context of the EPE theme of this blog. My only problem is time. So I will try to post new entries regularly, but I can't make any promises about posting frequency. I'm sorry....

My immediate next blog is on current issues.