History

Now into its 21th year, the Electrical Power and Energy Conference has its roots in Ottawa.

Historically, the first symposium leading up to this conference was the Electrical Power Symposium (EPS) held in Ottawa in 2001. The prime driver for hosting this event was a pronounced need to address the issue of deregulation in the electricity industry in Ontario at that time. This symposium was an opportunity to give voice to the various players in the de-regulation scenario and provided a forum for much debate between organizations, industry, academia and the public; especially regarding the actual implementation of deregulation.

EPS developed into an annual event in Ottawa and tackled new topics including, in 2003, the increasing debt and the widening gap between demand and supply, and, in 2004, the tough choices facing Ontario ranging from large-scale nuclear generation to demand management and distributed energy. With EPS 2005 the focus moved to more general issues such as the convergence of power and high technologies: communications, real-time applications, wide-area protection, smart metering, and automation in power systems.

Over the years, EPS grew in size and scope. In 2007, it switched from a local symposium to a national conference held in Montreal and sponsored by IEEE Canada. It was renamed the Electrical Power Conference (EPC) to reflect this evolution and has been moving around Canada ever since. In 2008, the conference was renamed to the Electrical Power and Energy Conference (EPEC) to reflect both its power and energy components. Below is a complete list of the events, their locations and their themes: