It is my pleasure to welcome you to the 31^st edition of the CDEGS Users’ Group Conference. This edition of the conference is distinctive in many ways. After two forced postponements, and as we see the light at the end of the tunnel of what have been two trying years, SES has the pleasure of hosting the Users’ Group Conference in Montreal, SES’s birthplace. This year’s event presents yet another first: our first hybrid in-person/virtual event. As we make a timid return to in-person meetings, having now gained more experience in hosting online meetings, we can benefit from valuable in-person interactions, while still greatly expanding the meeting’s reach with virtual participants from many different countries.

SES worked hard toward version 18 to ensure that all aspects of SES Software are gradually and constantly improving. Starting from the ground up, MALZ is now outfitted with a Multi-Region soil model, which will be used for Total Interference in Right-of-Way Pro, and also in CorrCAD. An enhancement considering the boundaries between soil regions is already approaching the final implementation phase. Finite Soil Volumes in MALT and MALZ now have a single set of patches along soil interfaces, improving the accuracy and efficiency of the computations. Finally, SESResap now has columns that can be ordered and displays the RMS in the results section of the interface.

SESCAD, the place where some users spend almost all of their time and energy, is being revamped, while the existing version continues to evolve in the meantime, with new tools to add sag to conductors and a new line coordinates simplification algorithm.

HIFREQ is seeing a frenzy of activity, first with a substantial reduction in computation time for large cases, a factor of two or greater in cases involving more than 2,000 elements. Next, you can now also specify a location for an arbitrary external device, and the solution for possibly hundreds of cases differing only in the behavior of the devices can be solved in roughly the same time it takes to solve a single case. We are also progressing in our efforts to model non-linear devices, and modeling ferromagnetic materials.

Modules recently introduced are maturing as well. Introduced last year, the HIFREQ-based SESTrainSimulator now allows you to quickly create a railway model combining a Google Earth^TM file and a cross-section, to accommodate as many rail routes as needed, and SESCombiner is invoked to combine results from multiple files into individual Average, Minimum, Maximum, and RMS results files. A new addition to SESAmpacity provides a new option that accurately calculates the ampacity of bi-metallic conductors such as copper-clad steel. SESShield-2D, also introduced last year, now includes a lightning strike probability plot. It offers shielding analysis as simultaneous or pair-based and includes backflash calculations. There is now a Risk Assessment tab for each type of loss, and the computed values and tolerable limits are plotted on the same scale, along with better error reporting and tools to find those errors.

In the circuit modeling world, multilayered cables in SESFcdist are no longer limited to the outer component being thin and non-magnetic, the user interface has been streamlined so that the data can be input more simply, and the creation or deletion of cable components is managed automatically. In SESCircuitSimulator, the duplicate action at any level in the circuit automatically duplicates all elements below it, making the copying of a terminal and all its sections, or a section with all its phases, much easier. The copy and paste actions allow copying data from one or several fields and pasting them into same-type data fields. RowCAD can now setup and run a monitored fault directly from the graphical interface, and RowCAD/ROW now include a fully customizable tower configuration specification with automatic computation of tower ground impedances, a more flexible and complete handling of entities and grounds at the Central Site, and more efficient memory management.

On the topic of pipeline work, we introduce this year CPCalculator, a new quick estimation tool for cathodic protection design, and CorrCAD continues to evolve with a more consistent energization specification and more plotting customization options.

The reporting of results continues to evolve with our powerful SES-3D Engine driving the rendering of results in CorrCAD, SESTransient, SESResultsViewer, SESThreshold, among others. SESResultsViewer now allows importing custom zone coordinates from SESThreshold into the Zoom window, and a more complete Google Earth^TM for touch and step voltage plots using Zones. SESPlotViewer also improved with a Save Image As with many formats with some allowing transparency, more marker types with fill, no-fill and bold versions, and more flexibility in handling data series and their tabs.

Our tools also saw improvements, with SESTextEditor now including a highlighting of error messages, as well as listing them in the issues list, and built-in navigation between warnings and errors in the file. SESConverter now supports files with hatch commands, can export invisible layers, and provides a helpful warning message on units that could save you from missing conductors.

We have also migrated several applications to 64 bits to greatly reduce the number of out-of-memory issues you could encounter.

Finally, we are making sure that our wealth of documentation continues to grow and remains up to date. There are new Quick Start Guides for SESTrainSimulator and SESCPCalculator, a new How-to Manual for SESCurvefitDigitizer and an updated lightning transient study How-to that shows how to use SESTransient. New Mini How-to Manuals for FFTSES and SESTralin have been created. We have also added new videos for SoilModelManager, and a multi-part video on SESScript and Macros. The interfaces of most applications, as well as the SES website, are now available in Portuguese, a language spoken natively by a quarter of a billion people, including several SES employees and affiliates who are working to expand our Portuguese documentation and support offerings.

We are extremely grateful to Giancarlo Leone of SR3 Engineering and Christopher Crance of Burns & McDonnell, this year’s Users’ Group chair and vice-chair, and Eric Diamond of Bass Engineering and Josh Brown of Power Engineers, this year’s secretary-treasurer, and vice secretary-treasurer, for their hard work. We are also grateful to Chance Baker of Burns & McDonnell, for chairing the UGM Presentation Task Force.

In addition to the organizers, I would also like to thank all participants for their contributions to the success of the CDEGS Users’ Group Conference and their continuous useful interactions through their questions and comments during the presentations, workshops, and Q&A sessions. Additional thanks to those who took time out of their busy schedules to prepare presentations, and to share their experience and acquired technical wisdom. It is this exchange of knowledge and ideas that makes the conference so valuable.

Finally, I again underline SES’s enduring gratitude to our loyal users. SES has been able to maintain license prices nearly unchanged for over 20 years, even while recently allowing access to two CPUs or PC cores. This was possible, in large part, due to the continuous expansion of our customer base, and without the need for broad advertising, bespeaking an effective word of mouth promotion by our faithful clients. In addition, the renewal of technical support, year after year, helps keep SES in touch with your needs, and financially sustains our R&D efforts, leading to all the advances you see at this conference.