Instructors:
Christoph Brunner
President
it4Power
Christoph Brunner has graduated as electrical engineer at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in 1983. He is Utility Industry professional with over 30 years of industry experience with both knowledge across several areas within the Utility Industry and of technologies from the Automation Industry. He is a well-known expert on IEC 61850 as he has been involved in the development of the standard since the beginning. He is president of it4power in Switzerland, a consulting company to the power industry. As such, he has been consultant in many projects for substation automation and projects involving IEC 61850. He has worked as a project manager at ABB Switzerland Ltd in the business area Power Technology Products in Zurich / Switzerland where he was responsible for the process close communication architecture of the substation automation system. He is convenor of the working group (WG) 10 of the IEC TC57 and member of WG 17, 18 and 19 of IEC TC57. He is IEEE Fellow, member of IEEE-PES and IEEE-SA. He is active in several working groups of the IEEE-PSRC (Power Engineering Society – Relay Committee) and member of the PSRC main committee and the subcommittee H. He is guest professor at Shangdong University of technology and international advisor to the board of the UCA international users group.
Jim Coats
President
Triangle MicroWorks, Inc.
Jim received both his Bachelors and Masters degrees in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology and spent the next 8 years developing embedded software for computer integrated manufacturing applications and medical electronics products. In 1994 he started Triangle MicroWorks, Inc. to provide communication protocol software to the Electrical Utility Industry and continues as President with a primary role of product research and design. Jim is currently Chief Financial Officer of the DNP3 Users Group and participates in IEC Technical Committee 57, Working Group 10.