This CD ROM holds a real wealth of information presented and discussed at the 21st CIRED conference on Electricity distribution held in Frankfurt in 2011.

The essence of CIRED is the awareness of professionals of the importance to meet colleagues and to share with them knowledge and experience in order to improve our competencies and skills so we can do a better and more satisfying job when we come home.
This is spelt out in CIRED’s vision: To be the leading forum where the international electricity distribution community meets.

The content: a professional perspective on topical subjects.
 The vital lead behind the programme was to look for the topical subjects and to consider them from a professional perspective: to be specific, in this case following the perspectives of the six traditional “CIRED sessions” that correspond to well established areas of interest and skills within the profession.

 The main motivation leading to this year’s programme included:
 
> To build on the success factors and on the appreciated changes of the recent conferences, while taking into account suggestions from delegates
> To promote the poster sessions as a favoured place to interact with authors and to network
> To start the conference with an opening forum with a bunch of strategic presentations followed by a discussion on major challenges facing the industry by keynote speakers who are leading figures drawn from the different sectors of our industry.
> To keep providing an event of interest for each theme each day, but clarifying the programme and avoiding some overlaps, by organising the tutorials and the technical visits out of the three general session days
 
Words of thanks
The value and quality of the material presented here is to be credited to the authors and contributors but we want to emphasise here the decisive role of the Technical Committee (Session chairmen and rappporteurs) who delivered a tremendous work for the preparation of the programme and the management of the sessions. Many other individuals contributed also in many ways to the success of this conference.

To all of them, and on behalf of the CIRED Community, we express our warm thanks.

 
For the Organizing Committee

André Even
Chairman