PES / IAS – Awards

Recipients of the Florida West Coast Outstanding Engineer Award.

2009 Richard Beatie
2008 Ghaff Khazami
2007 Randy Dotson
2006 John Stankowich and Art Nordlinger
2005 Richard Beatie
2004 Robert Beckwith
2002 Quang Tang
2001 John Twitchell
1999 Jim Howard

FWCS PES/IAS OUTSTANDING ENGINEER 2009

Mr. Richard Beatie is Vice President of Engineering for Lightning Master Corporation in Clearwater Florida. He is an accomplished engineer in the design and implementation of lightning protection systems for complex industrial, commercial, chemical production, oil drilling rigs, and broadcast towers.

Mr. Beatie graduated from the University of South Florida in 1970 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering. He is a registered Professional Engineer in the State of Florida.

Richard’s past careers include: senior engineer at Scientel America where he was responsible for designing state of the art cellular telephone / PCS sites, and 24 years senior engineer and manager with Tampa Electric Company, contributing to the areas of distribution, generation, revenue metering, SCADA systems, system dispatching, information technology and telecommunications systems.

Mr. Beatie has devoted many years of his professional career to the volunteer support of the IEEE and what it stands for. He was elevated to the rank of Senior Member in 1980 but his involvement started while a student member at USF in 1970. Over the years he has held all local Section offices, serving as Chair two different terms. He served on the IEEE Florida Council at many levels including Chair, and was their representative on the SOUTHCON Trade Show Board of Directors for four years. He represented the local Section as Chair and held a term as Secretary at the IEEE Region 3 level.

Local significant activities include many years in the roles of Registration Chair, Treasurer, and Steering Committee Volunteer for many of the technical conferences that have been held in the Tampa Bay area since 1972. He has been an active member of the Florida West Coast Section EXCOM during his entire professional career.

For his dedication to the IEEE he was a recipient of the IEEE Third Millennium Medal in 2000 “for Outstanding Achievements and Contributions.” and was presented the IEEE FWCS 2009 Engineer of the Year Award at the 2010 Tampa Bay Engineers Week Banquet “In Recognition and Appreciation for outstanding contributions and professional services to IEEE and the engineering profession.”

FWCS PES/IAS OUTSTANDING ENGINEER 2008

Ghaff Khazami is a Senior Member of IEEE, PES/IAS Chairman for FWCS of IEEE and Vice president of Megaway Inc. Consulting Engineers in Tampa. He is a Professional Engineer registered in the States of Florida and Wisconsin. Ghaff is an alumnus of the University of South Florida with over twenty five years experience in power utilities, consulting and design of Substations, Transmission lines, System Protection and Power System Analysis. Ghaff is a retiree from the G&T Company Seminole Electric Cooperative Inc; and has been involved in numerous Substation and Transmission projects as a manager and consultant.

FWCS PES/IAS OUTSTANDING ENGINEER 2007

Randy is Manager of Substation Operations, Energy Delivery at Lakeland Electric. Below are some of Randy’s activities;

Professional Engineer, Registered in the State of Florida
Graduate of the University of South Florida, BS in Electrical Engineering, 1975
Worked for Florida Power Corporation (Progress Energy, Florida) for 25 years

Presently the Manager of Substation Operations & Engineering at Lakeland Electric, City of Lakeland, FL . Randy has been deeply involved in High Voltage Capacitor Bank, High Voltage Circuit Breaker, High Voltage Switch, & Power Transformer standards, design, and applications.

Past Chairman of FWC/IEEE/PES (2 terms)
Senior Member
Standards Activities
Member IEEE/PES Switchgear Committee
Member IEEE/PES High Voltage Switchgear Sub-Committee
Member IEEE/PES High Voltage Switches Sub-Committee
Chairman IEEE/PES C37.016 Circuit Switcher Working Group
Chairman IEEE/PES C37.100 Task Force
Polk County USF Alumni Representative

FWCS PES/IAS OUTSTANDING ENGINEER 2006

John Stankowich’s career spans 40 years in the field. He received a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Pittsburgh in 1959. John’s career began as a Product Test Engineer for IBM in New York State. Later positions were with General Electric and Honeywell in Aerospace Quality Control, and then a five year stint in Industrial Communications and Control Field Engineering with a commercial firm. This work included equipment operating in fixed wire, carrier current, and mobile spectra communications. John then worked for 10 years in various plant engineering positions in the float glass industry. The following 10 years were spent overseas in Saudi Arabia working on projects in residential, commercial, industrial, and utility installations at the King Khalid International Airport at Riyadh. John’s most recent position, from which he is now retired, was with a telecommunications construction company doing CAD and electrical design. John was a student member of the AIEE and the IRE and upon graduation he became a member of both societies. He is a Life Member of the IEEE.

Art Nordlinger is the Manager, Grid Planning and Operations Support, at Tampa Electric Company where he manages both the planning of the transmission system and energy management system engineering. Art earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Northwestern University in 1979. His career began in the nuclear reactor design and testing program for 688 class attack submarines at Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company. He next worked in the information systems field and in industrial and commercial emergency power systems before attending Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and earning his Master of Engineering degree in Electric Power Engineering in 1988. Art then went to work for Florida Power Corporation, starting as a project engineer in the Company’s Energy Control Center. He held a number of engineering and management positions during his 13 years with Florida Power in generation and integrated resource planning, cogeneration, and the pricing and regulatory areas. He appeared as the Company’s witness in both the Florida Public Service Commission’s Demand Side Management Goals Docket (for which he earned the Chairman’s Award) and the Standard Offer Rules Docket. Art struck out on his own in 2001, starting Nordlinger Consulting which specializes in electric utility regulation, strategic planning, and rate analysis. He joined Tampa Electric in 2002. Art is a registered Professional Engineer in Florida and teaches portions of a Fundamentals of Engineering review course that reaches a national audience through a webcast. Art has also taught graduate courses at the University of South Florida in Power System Analysis and Advanced Energy Management Systems.

FWCS PES/IAS OUTSTANDING ENGINEER 2005

Outstanding Engineer for 2005 is Richard Beatie.

FWCS PES/IAS OUTSTANDING ENGINEER 2004

Outstanding Engineer for 2004 is Robert Beckwith.

In 1942, Mr. Beckwith invented Frequency Shift Keying (FSK) while working for the General Electric Power Line Carrier Section in Schenectady NY. This was applied to protection of generator transformers in the interconnection of transmission lines to supply power for the Manhattan Project. He worked with Dr. Edward Teller and Bell Labs’ Dr. Horton in developing secure voice modulated 26 kHz sonar for ship/submarine underwater communications. He worked with the Underwater Sound Laboratory at New London CT researching counters to German mines.

From 1955 to 1961 Mr. Beckwith was Manager, Computers & Communications, General Electric Company Electronics Research Laboratory, Syracuse, New York where the following significant achievements were made:

· 26KHz Spread-Spectrum Sonar
· “Machine Tool Director”, for manufacturing steam turbine buckets to mathematically generated shapes, which improved turbine efficiency 1%.
· Over-the-Horizon Radar (OTHR), with a 2,000-mile range, under contract to Navy Research Labs (NRL), Washington, D.C.
· First Polaris Digital Fire Control system, developed in cooperation with Dr. Stark Draper & David Gold to work with Draper’s gyro-guided “bird”. The fire control system used the first point-contact germanium transistors.
· In 1956, initiated change of the ERMA computer for the Bank of America from the vacuum tube wired program design of Stanford Research Laboratory to a new transistorized design using programmable drum memory. Was responsible for the first phase of the new design while the GE Computer Dept. was formed to build 30 machines for the bank.

From 1961 to 1967 Mr. Beckwith was Manager of Utility Systems at Gulton Industries where he developed an early-transistorized Supervisory Control & Data Acquisition (SCADA) system for the Bureau of Reclamation. He developed the first transistorized synchronizer for generators, and for three electric utility tie points between the eastern and western USA power transmission grid. In 1967 Mr. Beckwith founded Beckwith Electric Company (BECO) and developed the BECO generator and line synchronizers after buying his patents from Gulton. In 1970 he developed the first transistorized control for underload tapchanging transformers for electric utility use. In 1993, Mr. Beckwith oversaw recovery and reconstruction after a devastating Florida tornado destroyed the main BECO facility. In 1997, under his innovative guidance, BECO again led the industry by introducing its “Autodaptive” system of tapchanging transformer and distribution line capacitor controls for hands-off automation of distribution substation Volts, Watts, and VArs. In 2000 Mr. Beckwith founded Beckwith Electric Research (BER), a division of BECO, which conducts research at the forefront of present-day engineering and physics. Robert W. Beckwith and the company he founded in 1967, Beckwith Electric Company (BECO), are world leaders in the electrical power industry. Mr. Beckwith is a former member of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE), and the Institute of Electronic Engineers (IRE) that combined to form the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE).

· 26KHz Spread-Spectrum Sonar

· “Machine Tool Director”, for manufacturing steam turbine buckets to mathematically generated shapes, which improved turbine efficiency 1%.

· Over-the-Horizon Radar (OTHR), with a 2,000-mile range, under contract to Navy Research Labs (NRL), Washington, D.C.

· First Polaris Digital Fire Control system, developed in cooperation with Dr. Stark Draper & David Gold to work with Draper’s gyro-guided “bird”. The fire control system used the first point-contact germanium transistors.

· In 1956, initiated change of the ERMA computer for the Bank of America from the vacuum tube wired program design of Stanford Research Laboratory to a new transistorized design using programmable drum memory. Was responsible for the first phase of the new design while the GE Computer Dept. was formed to build 30 machines for the bank.

FWCS PES/IAS OUTSTANDING ENGINEER 2002

Outstanding Engineer for 2002 is Quang Tang

FWCS PES/IAS OUTSTANDING ENGINEER 2001

Outstanding Engineer for 2001 is John Twitchell

FWCS PES/IAS OUTSTANDING ENGINEER 1999

Outstanding Engineer for 1999 is James M. Howard.
Electrical Engineer III, Lakeland Electric, Lakeland, Florida

James M. Howard received the B.S.E.E. degree from the University of South Florida in 1985. He is currently an Electrical Engineer with Lakeland Electric, a municipal electric company in Lakeland, Florida, in the Energy Delivery Transmission and Distribution Engineering Department. He joined Lakeland Electric after spending almost 24 years with Tampa Electric Company where he started as a Cooperative Education Student in 1979 and, through the next 23 plus years, held positions in Energy Delivery: Distribution Engineering, South Hillsborough Operations Center, and as Supervisor of Reliability for Transmission and Distribution. Currently he is responsible for the Distribution Recloser Project, the Distribution Reactive Power Program, road widening projects, and other projects.

IEEE Activities — (S81-M85-SM91) COMMITTEES/BOARDS: Regional Activities Board, Membership Activities, Vice Chair, 1998-99; Membership Development, Chair, 1998-99. REGIONS: Region 3: Director, 2002-2003, Area 4(Florida Council) Representative, 1993-94; Membership Development, Chair, 1996-97; Conference Committee, Chair, 1998-99; Sections Congress ’96, Speaker. COUNCILS: Florida Council: Chair, 1993-94; Vice Chair, 1992; Junior Past Chair, 1995; Membership Development, Chair, 1994-99. SECTIONS: Florida West Coast: Chair, 1991-93; Vice Chair, 1990-91; Membership Development, Chair, 1994-98; Student Branch Mentor, 1997-04; PE/IA Chapter, Chair, 1990-91; Vice Chair, 1989; Secretary/Treasurer, 1988. SOCIETIES: Power Engineering: Membership & Chapters, Vice President, 1997-98; Chapters Council, Chair, 1996; Membership Development, Chair, 1995; Membership Statistics Sub-Committee, Chair, 1994; Meeting Department, Secretary, 1994-98; Chapters Congress, Speaker, 1995; Distribution Design Committee, 1997-99. CONFERENCES: Sections Congress Steering Committee Chair 2003-2005, Industrial & Commercial Power Systems (I&CPS), Vice-Chair, 2004, I&CPS, Publications, Chair, 1993; I&CPS 2000, Vice Chair; Region 3 SoutheastCon, Chair, 1996; Power Engineering Society Winter Meeting, General Chair, 1998; Southcon, Director, 1995-99 & 2004-; Treasurer, 1998. AWARDS: Region 3 Outstanding Service, 1996; Florida Council Outstanding Service, 1995; Power Engineering Society Chapters Council, 1998.

IEEE Florida West Coast Section

PES / IAS – Awards