Developments in power electronics, machines and drives

The IEE has a long tradition of running successful conferences in the key power areas of electrical machines, power electronics and drives. For almost 20 years now these have been focused into two high-quality bi-annual conferences: ´Electrical machines and drives´ and ´Power electronics and variable speed drives´. Trends in the underlying technologies have brought the subject areas of these conferences closer together along with their practitioners. The IEE therefore believes that it can best meet the needs of both communities by merging the conferences into a single event-Power Electronics, Machines and Drives Conference (PEMD). The first PEMD Conference will be held at the University of Bath on the 16th-18th April 2002.The purpose of this article is to address the question of why these two technical conferences should be brought together.