Regional dispatching - Nancy.

Throughout the years, Cigre has had a positive impact on your industry by contributing to the advancement of knowledge and experience in a very wide range of field: from engineering issues to organization ones, from apparatus to power systems.

In these times of fast changing industrial and institutional arrangements, deregulation (or re-regulation) and liberalization on one hand, new technologies on the others, it is rewarding to note that the interest in the work of Cigre has increased as witnessed by the growing numbers of National Committees formed in recent years.

In this context, I wish to cite Mr. Kevin Mackey, General Manager Service Delivery, Transpower, New Zealand, who recently summarized the benefits of Cigre to an electricity company a follows:

• Availability of expertise

There is an enormous wealth of accumulated knowledge and experience within the Cigre memberships which transcends geographical, political and commercial boundaries. Membership provides very access to this expertise and also enables ones own experience to be contributed. In this way, one avoids re-inventing solution which have been developed elsewhere.

• Practice involving judgement

Some solutions involve an element of risks and costs. Access to comparison of the practiced of other countries has been valuable in helping make such judgements and having discussions with regulators on such issues.

• Comparative benchmarking

Performance and practice surveys allow comparisons with other countries throughout the world. This can be particularly useful in confirming one's own practice and improvement.

• Guide/Recommendations

The availability of and access to guides, some of which migrate to international standard, is another area of value gained through Cigre.

• Networking/Introductions

Being connected to a vast network of people. The Study Committee structure can quickly put you in touch with the expertise/experience relevant to your problem/circumstances at the time. The value of being able to do this over a wide range of technical problems is very large.

Cigre Provides many other benefits through its conferences, symposia, regional forums, etc. With the dissemination of information and the opportunity to contribute one's experience. We trust you will find our Whitebook "important achievements of CIGRE" interesting reading and informative as to the purpose and meaning of our organization.