“Comprehensive Asset Strategy (Run to Failure is no Longer a Viable Strategy)”

Jonathan Sykes

 Distinguished IEEE Lecturer

 Sr. Manager of System Protection, PG&E, USA

 10 am – 11 am, Wednesday 29 June 2016

 Venue: Room 456 in von Haast Building

 Electrical & Computer Engineering Department,

 University of Canterbury 

Biography
Jonathan Sykes is the Senior Manager of System Protection at Pacific Gas and Electric Company, headquartered in San Francisco, California, USA. Jonathan received his academic and practitioner training in Arizona. He earned his Bachelor of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering in 1982 from the University of Arizona and worked at Salt River Project, in Phoenix, Arizona for more than 25 years before joining PG&E in 2009. He is a Professionally Licensed Electrical Engineer and Senior member of IEEE.

Jonathan has always challenged himself and his team to explore emerging technologies. He has helped pave the path to introduction of technology where grid modernization and system reliability, for more than 16 million customers, reaches equilibrium.

In the early 1990s, Jonathan led a team to provide the first integrated protective relay/RTU/SCADA systems in Arizona. In the early 2000s, his team implemented one of the first wide area “GOOSE” systems in the world. His PG&E team is now co-sponsoring the next generation, routable GOOSE (R-GOOSE). Today, Jonathan leads a strong team of internationally recognized experts, Fellows of IEEE and distinguished lecturers, with extensive knowledge on Emergency System and Natural Calamity Response ranging from earthquake and disaster recovery to major wide-area outages. Mr. Sykes and his teams participate in regulatory committees at the regional level (WECC) and the national level (NERC) and he has held leadership positons in these organizations.

Jonathan is a strong believer that knowledge needs to be shared and success is a result of collaboration that must occur regionally, nationally and internationally and must be in industry activities as well as regulatory oversight. This collaboration will be key to reaching a sustainable future of our industry. Jonathan sponsored collaboration that created a world class Proof of Concept facility that validates new techniques for the use of synchrophasor technology and in the area of Asset Life Cycle Management he and his team are developing new concepts that will be used to prioritize expenditures and maintain reliability. Mr. Sykes’s Department is the host of the i-PCGRID Workshop, an annual international gathering of academics, consultancy, manufacturing, provincial and state governments, utility industry Policy makers and IEEE Fellows and Life Fellows with focus on Generation, Technology, Security, Reliability and Sustainability. Mr. Sykes promotes partnership with universities and leverages the relationship of his diverse team to discover talent and mature research ideas throughout North America and produce the next stewards of the industry.