Alberto Ramirez 10

Dr. Ramirez Orquin has an electric utility experience spanning over four decades, starting as a Niagara Mohawk Utility trainee, followed by five years as an application and research engineer at the General Electric Company/AC Transmission Engineering Operation in Schenectady, NY, where he was also certified on Surge Arrester Technology.

Moreover he practiced for several years in Canada, Brazil, Bolivia and Argentina where he notably served as Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Energy to conduct its National Grid Planning. As an IEEE Senior Member, he was distinguished at the institution’s Centennial Meeting by the plenary T&D Committee for his leadership in the emblematical 500 KV Transmission Project. Furthermore, he had a key role as a co-author and general reviewer of the first edition of the EPRI/Edison Electric Institute’s EHV Transmission Line Reference Book 345 KV And Above which has since become a world standard reference; likewise contributing to the books Operation and Control of Electric Energy Processing Systems (Wiley/IEEE 2010) as well as to the one sponsored by the Task Force on National and Homeland Security entitled Apocalypse Unknown: the Struggle to Protect America from an Electromagnetic Pulse Catastrophe.

Additionally, he has extensively published Transactions and Journal Papers and holds several U.S. Patents on mitigation technology for grid security. In 2007, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security certified Dr. Ramirez Orquin as an Outstanding Researcher. Currently, he serves as a Member of NERC’s Geomagnetic Disturbance Task Force serving in its Mitigation-Device Team, as well as a holding membership at Maine’s PUC GMD-EMP Risk Working Group and the Florida State Congress EMP Working Group. Dr. Orquin holds a ME from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas (UTA).