Speakers

  Jonathan Sykes, PE, Vice President of Advanced Applications at Quanta Technology, is an IEEE Fellow, and has for 42 years collaboratively leveraged technology to close gaps and champion success for utilities. During the 27 years he spent with Salt River Project (SRP) he led the team to upgrade and modernize the 500kV relaying to provide reliability and consistency. At SRP, he also led the team to implement an advanced Remdial Action Scheme (RAS) that protected the WECC system from N-1 and N-2 contingencies. During his 10 years at PG&E, he led the team that developed leading-edge concepts in asset life cycle management for mission-critical systems and developed new techniques and processes to transform the aging grid into a reliable, sustainable, and affordable grid of the future. Jonathan’s team have helped the industry and utilities move towards digital relays and substations. At SRP he helped design and implement the first integrated substations and while at PG&E he guided the team to implement the next version of 61850 substations. While working at Luma he supported the team in designing a full implementation of 61850 with merging units and process bus. Now his teams work with utilities to discover how these digital and virtual substations can conserve budget and schedule and create sustainability. 

In his spare time he helps utilities develop wildfire mitigation strategies and chairs IEEE PES PSRC D45 Work Group to produce a technical paper describing techniques to lower the risks of wildfire ignition. His teams are also helping clients find solutions to address the problems encountered with the prolifereation of renewables and IBRs.