Carson W. Taylor, an expert in blackout investigations and advanced research in power system performance, is being honored by the IEEE with the 2009 IEEE Herman Halperin Electric Transmission and Distribution Award..

The award, sponsored by the Robert and Ruth Halperin Foundation (in memory of Herman and Edna Halperin) and the IEEE Power and Energy Society, recognizes Taylor for contributions to enhance the voltage stability, dynamic performance and reliability of large interconnected electric power systems. The award will be presented on July 28, 2009, at the IEEE Power & Energy Society General Meeting (PES), Calgary, AB, Canada.

Considered an international expert in power system stability, Taylor led many projects while with the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) that improved system reliability and dynamics in the Western North American power system. He is perhaps best known for the development and on-line demonstration in 2002–2005 of the Wide-Area voltage and stability Control System (WACS) for interconnected power grids. WACS incorporates real-time sensors distributed throughout the power grid and global-positioning-satellite technology for high-speed automatic control of power-grid conditions. If a problem is detected, steps can be taken to quickly stabilize the problem before it affects the rest of the grid, avoiding a system- or region-wide blackout affecting many states.

What can be seen as the foundation for the WACS project began with Taylor’s work in the 1970s with the implementation of modern load-shedding controls and the groundbreaking work during the early 1990s concerning undervoltage load shedding in the Puget Sound area. Load shedding involves monitoring the system and temporarily cutting power to certain areas when demands are near peak levels or unable to be met because of outages. This ultimately results in more reliable operation of the power grid.

Taylor has contributed his expertise in investigating major blackouts, such as the March 1999 event in Brazil and the August 2003 event in Ohio, Michigan, New York and Ontario. He has conducted many seminars for today’s engineers promoting the best practices to avoid blackouts. In 2005, he was selected for U.S. National Academy of Engineering Committee on Enhancing the Robustness and Resilience of Future Electrical Transmission and Distribution in the United States to Terrorist Attack.

An IEEE Life Fellow and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, Taylor’s “Power System Voltage Stability” (McGraw Hill, 1994) was the first book written on the topic, and is translated into Chinese. He earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a U.S. Army Signal Corps officer commission from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1965, and a master’s degree in electric power engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York in 1969. He attended the Westinghouse Advanced School in Power System Engineering (now part of Penn State University), Monroeville, Pennsylvania, in 1981. Taylor retired in 2006 as a principal engineer at BPA, where he worked since 1969.