2017 Electric Ship Technologies Symposium

The organizing committee is pleased to invite members of the IEEE Transportation Electrification Community to the seventh Electric Ship Technology Symposium (ESTS), which will be held August 15-17, 2017 in the Washington, DC metro area.  The original vision for ESTS was formed in 2003 as part of efforts commissioned by the IEEE Technical Activities Board to identify important technology trends which were under-served at that time.  During these planning activities, significant interest was identified in technologies associated with the development of all-electric ships; and it was recognized that no dedicated IEEE conference or society was in place to support these efforts.  As a result, planning for an electric-ship conference was initiated, culminating in the first ESTS which was held in Philadelphia, PA in 2005.  

Strong support for ESTS by industry, academia, and government has continued since the initial meeting in 2005; and as a result, ESTS has been held every two years since that time.  In 2017 we will carry on this tradition with the seventh biennial ESTS, which is sponsored by the IEEE Power Electronics Society (PELS) and the IEEE Power & Energy Society (PES).  

 

ESTS offers an exciting complement to the various ground-vehicle-centric events and conferences.  While the development of electrified maritime platforms shares significant overlap with the development of electrified ground-vehicle platforms, there are also some differences.  The most obvious example is that the electric power demands of electrified maritime platforms is much higher than that required by electrified ground vehicles.  This distinction may make the content of ESTS interesting to the broader community of TEC, since some of the challenges currently being addressed by ESTS content may be relevant to future ground vehicles, as the power requirements of those platforms continue to increase.

 

The quality of the technical content at ESTS is consistently high, and represents a broad cross-section of technologies which are likely to be of significant interest to the members of the IEEE TEC.  The technical session docket for this year's meeting includes electric power system architectures, electric ship design tools & methodologies, electric propulsion & generation, power conversion for DC distribution, energy storage, power distribution, protection-reconfiguration-survivability, and power system control methods and architectures.

 

This year we have an exciting program with one keynote address, eight technical tracks, more than 115 technical papers, and five technical tutorials.  The keynote address will be provided by RADM William J. Galinis, Program Executive Officer, Ships, at the US Naval Sea Systems Command, who brings a wealth of knowledge regarding the technical trade-offs and practical considerations associated with large-scale ship design.  The technical tutorial schedule includes one full-day session on electric ship design & modeling software, and four half-day sessions covering future ship architectures, electromagnetic interference management, pulsed alternators, and high-temperature superconductor technology.

 

The venue for the conference is the recently-renovated Westin Crystal City Hotel in Arlington, VA.  This fully-featured hotel is conveniently located adjacent to the Crystal City metro stop, approximately 1.0 mi from Reagan National Airport, and easily accessible from all parts of the Washington, DC metro area.  It should be noted that we have negotiated a favorable block rate with the hotel for attendees of ESTS 2017, which is available until July 24 or until filled.

 

We would like to encourage you to spend a few minutes reviewing the additional detailed content which is available on the conference website, http://ests17.mit.edu/ and hope that you will attend ESTS 2017.  We look forward to seeing you this August!

 

Sincerely,

Andrew Lemmon

ESTS 2017 Publicity Chair

 

Scott Sudhoff

ESTS 2017 General Chair