Besides random luck, understanding the ‘why’ (behind things and events) is the fundamental requirement to enable progress and improvement

Peter van der Wielen is part-time professor of Reliability Grid Components with the Electrical Energy Systems group at the TU/e department of Electrical Engineering. His main affiliation is with DNV GL – Energy, where he is a business director responsible for the power failure investigations business and principal consultant in power cables. He initiates, coordinates and performs research and teaches students on subjects related to grid component reliability. Furthermore, he lectures various modules in the various DNV GL training courses, related to power cables, condition and remaining lifetime assessment, as well as power failure investigations.

Subjects in his current field of work and research are: testing & diagnostics, grid component reliability, remaining life estimations, degradation and failure mechanisms, failure analysis, power cables, maintenance methodologies, and asset management in general. Peter van der Wielen is author of over 80 scientific publications, reviewer of many publications and provided various plenary and invited speeches at conferences. He has been (and regularly is) member of various national and international technical committees.

Peter van der Wielen studied Electrical Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e, The Netherlands) where he received his MSc degree in 2000. In 2005, he received his PhD degree for his study on on-line monitoring of partial discharges in medium voltage power cables, which evolved into a system now known as “Smart Cable Guard”. This research was carried out both at TU/e and at KEMA (Arnhem, The Netherlands, now DNV GL), where he started working as consultant in the field of Power Cables and Systems. In 2014, he received the ‘Hidde Nijland’ Award (a prestigious Dutch award of the power sector, awarded once every 4 years) for “his innovative and relevant research, and the development and implementation of ground-breaking technology for the availability and reliability of power cable networks”. In 2017, he was appointed Business Director Power Failure Investigations and Principal Consultant Power Cables at DNV GL. In 2018, he was appointed part-time professor of Reliability Grid Components at the TU/e department of Electrical Engineering.