Issues in Digital Audio That Persist To This Day   With Speakers James J. (JJ) Johnston and Bob Smith   Presented by AES Pacific Northwest Section and IEEE Seattle SPS (SeaSiPS)   There has been a lot of argument, dispute, complaining, and shouting about tracks being too loud or too close to digital maximum. In this talk, we will show: what happens to your signal, its spectrum, and its loudness (remember, loudness is a perceived quantity) how this affects the ability to be transmitted via bit-rate reduction systems how it affects standard "lossless" codecs using graphics and audio clips, what happens to your music when you clip it digitally, cause intersample overs, and/or hypercompress in the name of LOUD how this sort of clipping causes aliasing of other clipping byproducts and how intersample overs make a DAC fall apart in a different way how a pleasant sound can become something else altogether using a variety of statistics on particular clips taken directly from their intended digital delivery streams, exhibiting clipping, what one might call enlightened clipping, level compression, intersample overs, changes in loudness over a track, and how much spectral dynamic range there is in a variety of digital streams that encoding/decoding such streams, especially with lossy codecs can create MORE clipping and MORE intersample overs, forcing both more distortion and higher required data rates for the reduced-rate music. We are not going to talk about artistic judgements that are supposed to be LOUD, but rather about what happens after mastering when a clip has been pushed beyond reason. KEEP IT DOWN A BIT. If you want to clip, do leave some headroom. That way, rather than having a delivered result that depends entirely on the actual DAC the listener is using, you can guarantee your market a consistent experience. About AES The Audio Engineering Society is the only professional society devoted exclusively to audio technology. Founded in the United States in 1948, the AES has grown to become an international organization that unites audio engineers, creative artists, scientists and students worldwide by promoting advances in audio and disseminating new knowledge and research. Currently, over 12,000 members are affiliated with more than 75 AES professional Sections and more than 95 AES student Sections around the world. Through local Section events, members experience valuable opportunities for education, professional networking and personal growth. About IEEE The Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers, or IEEE (eye-triple-e), is the world's largest technical professional society serving professionals in all areas of electrical, electronic, and computing technologies. Due to its size and breadth of technical interests, the society is comprised of "chapter societies" representing the major sub-fields of study in electrical and computer engineering. Signal processing encompasses a wide-range of mathematical and computing techniques for the analysis, synthesis, and transformation of data. Hot topics in the group today include: music information retrieval, speech recognition and synthesis, acoustic event detection, and audio spatialization to name a few.   Speaker(s): JJ Johnston, Bob Smith Location: Digipen Institute of Technology 9931 Willows Rd Redmond, Washington 98052

  Utilities need to know the grid topology and loads to perform any meaningful grid optimization task. Rather than passively collecting data from sensors and meters, this talk puts forth an active data acquisition scheme termed grid probing. The idea is to leverage smart inverters to probe an electric grid and record its voltage response at probed buses, with the purpose of grid learning. Grid probing can be performed by commanding inverters to perturb their power injections. Multiple probing actions can be induced within a few tens of seconds. We will explain how probing can be used to infer: a) non-metered loads; and b) feeder topologies. For non-metered loads, we assume the topology to be known and that non-metered loads do not change significantly during probing. By coupling the power flow equations across time, we are able to identify non-metered loads under specific placement conditions, which can be easily checked beforehand. Our analysis and solvers can handle phasor and/or magnitude-only voltage data. We have also designed inverter injections to improve load recovery and ensure safe feeder operation. Grid probing can be also used for recovering grid topologies even without knowing the loads at non-probing buses: Probing all terminal buses on a radial feeder and measuring voltages at all buses, the topology and line impedances can be uniquely recovered. If voltages are recorded only at probing buses, then a reduced grid bearing several similarities to the original grid can be recovered. Speaker(s): Vasesilis, Location: Seattle, Washington

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Excom for October Location: Room: 1919 Bldg: 99 14820 Northeast 36th Street Redmond, Washington 98052

Power systems around the world are changing due to the increasing share of variable renewable generation and new demand patterns. The higher variability and more uncertainty with respect to generation and demand will greatly challenge operation and control of future power grids. Increasing use of power electronics in generation, transmission and end use adds to these challenges, but can also represent part of the solutions providing more flexibility. From the perspective of the Nordic (Norway, Sweden Finland and Denmark) power system, this presentation will discuss some of the development trends and give brief introductions to some of the research topics that address the operational challenges. This includes the development of Wide Area Monitoring System (WAMS) applications to help operators gain improved situational awareness, control applications based on synchrophasor measurements and the utilization of power electronic VSC converters to improve power system control. Kjetil Uhlen   Speaker(s): Kjetil, Location: Seattle, Washington

Snohomish County PUD and Burns & McDonnell are designing and building a microgrid that will demonstrate the multiple uses of battery energy storage with a focus on disaster recovery and renewable energy integration. In addition, the microgrid will explore using V2G (Vehicle to Grid) capable charging stations to experiment with using electric fleet vehicles to support the microgrid as just another form of energy storage. The project will look at the technical and financial challenges and reports will be completed to detail the economics of microgrids, battery storage and solar on the northwest grid. Our speaker is Scott Gibson who is a Principal Engineer with Snohomish County PUD in the Generation Department. Scott is a graduate from the University of Wyoming where he received a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering in 1987.  After graduation, Scott worked for Boeing, designing electrical power systems for airplanes, in addition to an engineering firm where he designed electrical systems for commercial buildings.  In 2000, Scott joined Snohomish County PUD and started in the Power Quality and Energy Efficiency group, then moved to Distribution and finally to the Generation Department, where he’s been for seven years.  Scott is now the Principal Engineer on all new electrical generation projects. Scott worked on the development of a Tidal Generation Project, is helping to design and construct two new “run of the river” Hydroelectric Projects and will now get to be the Project Manager for the PUD’s new Microgrid. https://www.snopud.com/reliability/ar-microgrid.ashx?p=3326 Location: Bldg: Brown & Caldwell 701 Pike St Suite 1200 Seattle, Washington 98101

  Cybersecurity of the electric power grid has become a significant challenge due to expanding threats and a growing attack surface. Once only a theoretical threat, real-world attacks have now been identified that resulted in regional power outages. This cyber landscape is only expanding as the integration of Distributed Energy Resources (DER) and Internet of Things (IoT) devices introduce new risk and security challenges. This talk will provide an introduction to the cybersecurity of the electric power grid, including current threats and key challenges that are being faced by the industry. It will discuss both approaches to traditional grid control systems security, and novel risks from DER. At WSU, the Attack Surface Host Analysis tool has been develop to help industry manage the growing exposure of software platforms and the complexity of managing legacy software that must support critical grid operations, along with case studies on various grid software platforms within the WSU Smart City Testbed and other industry systems. Furthermore, the talk will highlight the need for new risk assessment approaches and perspectives to understand the interconnectivity of DER as ownership of energy resources shifts from the utility to consumers or third parties.   Speaker(s): Adam, Location: Seattle, Washington

      Drift is a Series A-funded energy startup with expertise in the New York retail/wholesale energy market. Drift is an ESCO/REP in NY state and a wholesale market participant in NYISO, with plans to expand to other regions of the U.S. in 2019. We combine the power of data, machine learning, and software development to transform energy markets by removing inefficiencies in the energy supply chain to pass the savings on to consumers and renewable energy project developers. Today’s environmental sustainability leaders are working toward consuming only renewable electricity every hour of every day. The industry is experiencing firsthand as leading companies like Starbucks, Nike, and Google struggle with this challenge because the traditional power markets don't distinguish between coal and renewables. We set out to change that by building the first fully-renewable regulated power market. We call it Drift Energy. Drift is the only company that can supply 100% renewable power, every hour of every day. Drift sources power directly from a growing network of independent renewable-energy producers. This lets us cut out the middleman and pass on savings on total energy spend while still paying renewable providers a well-deserved premium for their power. This presentation will provide an overview of the company, and its vision to provide renewable power, every hour of every day, with Drift’s innovative Real-Time Green offering. Speaker(s): Mushfiqur, Location: Seattle, Washington

This presentation covers the development of electric energy in the Puget Sound Region from its early beginnings to the present, and a look into the future. Technical development, utility governance, and the administrative structure necessary to meet the myriad responsibilities of the modern utility are addressed. Speaker(s): Uzma, Location: Seattle, Washington