Dr. Fran Li Receives the 2026 IEEE PES Roy Billinton Power System Reliability Award and the IEEE PES Prize Paper Award

Dr. Fangxing (Fran) Li received the 2026 IEEE PES Roy Billinton Power System Reliability Award and, together with his co-authors, the 2026 IEEE PES Prize Paper Award, at the 2026 IEEE PES General Meeting.

At the 2026 IEEE Power & Energy Society (PES) General Meeting, held in Montreal, Québec, Canada, Dr. Fangxing (Fran) Li, director of CURENT and the ENLITEN Lab, was honored with two of the society’s most prestigious awards. The awards were presented during the IEEE PES Awards Ceremony on July 21, 2026.

Dr. Fran Li with the Roy Billinton Power System Reliability Award (left) and the IEEE PES Prize Paper Award (right) at the 2026 IEEE PES General Meeting.

IEEE PES Roy Billinton Power System Reliability Award

The IEEE PES Roy Billinton Power System Reliability Award recognizes outstanding individuals for their contributions to the reliability of electric power systems. Named in honor of Professor Roy Billinton, a pioneer of power system reliability engineering, it is one of the field’s highest individual honors. Dr. Li received the award “for contributions to probabilistic methods in market simulation, grid reliability and resilience assessment.”

IEEE PES Roy Billinton Power System Reliability Award

IEEE PES Prize Paper Award

Dr. Li, together with co-authors Buxin She, Hantao Cui, Jinning Wang, Qiwei Zhang, and Rui Bo, also received the 2026 IEEE PES Prize Paper Award for the paper “Virtual Inertia Scheduling (VIS) for Real-Time Economic Dispatch of IBR-Penetrated Power Systems,” published in IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy (vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 938-951, April 2024). The award highlights the group’s contributions to preserving system inertia and enabling the reliable, economic operation of power grids with high penetration of inverter-based resources (IBRs). All of the co-authors are ENLITEN Lab members and alumni.

IEEE PES Prize Paper Award: Virtual Inertia Scheduling (VIS)

Congratulations to Dr. Li and all co-authors on these outstanding achievements!

For more details, see the official 2026 IEEE PES Award Recipients announcement and the IEEE PES Roy Billinton Power System Reliability Award page.