The Sixth Annual IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exhibition (ECCE 2014), “Your Bridge to a Clean and Sustainable Energy Future,” will come to Pittsburgh, Pa. Sept. 14 through 18.

The event will include an expo area of about 40 exhibitors. On Tuesday Sept. 16, admission to the exhibits will be free to the public as a service to engineers in the Pittsburgh area.

The technical program focuses on cutting-edge power electronics and power applications. It begins on Sunday Sept. 14 with 12 tutorials covering power converters, energy conversion control, semiconductor devices, soft and hard magnetic materials, and fast-growing application areas that include subsea electrification.

Four distinguished plenary speakers will cover trends and future developments in energy conversion. Alex King, Director of the Critical Materials Institute, will speak on critical materials for energy systems manufacturing. Peter Steimer, Vice President of Innovation at ABB, will devote his session to high-power electronics innovations. Peter Savagian, General Director of Electrication Systems and Electric Drive Engineering at General Motors, will talk on barriers to the electification of the automobile. And S.S. Mani, General Manager of Renewable Energy Projects at NTPC Ltd. India will discuss the impact of renewable energy sources on the power demand in developing countries.

There are roughly 300 technical session papers in this year’s event. They focus on two major thematic areas: broad energy conversion system solutions and components and subsystems solutions. Session topics include smart grids, appliances and buildings, power semiconductor devices, renewable energy systems, electric machines, transportation applications electric motor drives, telecommunication systems, power converters, energy harvesting, and component and sub-component packing.

Plenary sessions cover topics in electrical machines, reluctance machines, DFIG-based wind systems, wave and wind-generation systems, converters for solar PV systems, smart grid components, power supplies, isolated dc-dc converters, multilevel converters, grid-connected and off-grid power converters, control issues in electric drives, PM machines, energy storage, stability and control of microgrids, single-phase, ac-dc and dc-ac converters, control in power converters and renewable energy, and a number of other areas.

More information is available from the ICCE website: http://2014.ecceconferences.org/