Sanders to testify at resiliency congressional hearing

ECE ILLINOIS Department Head William H Sanders, Donald Biggar Willett Professor of Engineering, will testify before the 115th United States Congress on Tuesday, October 3, 2017, at 9 a.m. CST. His is one of four witnesses who will speak as part of a hearing titled "Resiliency: The Electric Grid's Only Hope" held by the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.

Sanders, co-PI of the Cyber Resilient Energy Delivery Consortium (CREDC) at Illinois, is one of the authors of “Enhancing the Resilience of the Nation's Electricity System." This congressionally mandated report by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine was released in July 2017 and prescribes specific actions to improve the reliability of individual grid components and an increased integrated perspective among the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), state groups, and private utility stakeholders. The full report is available online, and a recording of a webinar highlighting key points is also available for download.

The purpose of Tuesday's hearing is to help define resiliency, discuss reccomendations from the report, and highlight the importance of research focused on grid resiliency, infrastructure, and operational strategy. The four witnesses for the hearing are Sanders, Carl Imhoff, manager of Electricity Market Sector, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Gavin Dillingham, program director of Clean Energy Policy, Houston Advanced Research Center, and Walt Baum, executive director of Texas Public Power Association.

Live streaming will be available on the committee’s website and YouTube.