At the PMAPS2026 Gala Dinner held at the University of Utah Rice-Eccles Stadium, in the Ken Garff University Club, on Wednesday 23rd September 2026, two memorials were held to remember and celebrate the lives of PMAPS IS co-founder Professor Roy Billinton and PMAPS IS Chairman of Board of Directors Professor Alfredo Testa. Each memorial lasted for about 20 minutes, in the presence of about 200 conference delegates at one of Utah’s most iconic venues and host of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. On behalf of the PMAPS International Society (IS), Resident Director Lalit Goel hosted the memorials.

Roy was one of three founding fathers of the PMAPS International Society (IS), and his passing was a huge loss to the power engineering community. The memorial was held to recognize his visionary contributions, leadership, and profound impact on the global power engineering community. Professor Roy’s memorial commenced with a 10-minute photo/video montage of Roy’s early life, professional career and achievements, family, colleagues, students and friends – the contributions of Wenyuan Li in the preparation of the montage was thankfully acknowledged. Lalit then requested Aydogan Ozdemir, Chair of PMAPS2012 in Istanbul, to say a few words about his memory of time spent with Roy. This was followed by a short speech by Albert Melo from Brazil, currently serving as the Chair of the Roy Billinton Power System Reliability Award Committee. Lalit then invited Roy’s youngest son, Jeffrey Billinton who was in attendance as a conference delegate, to say a few words about his father – Jeffrey made an emotional tribute to Roy. Lalit then himself spent a few minutes highlighting his student days under Roy’s supervision, and how Roy had a profound influence on him not only due to his excellent research, but also due to his humility, teaching style interspersed with humour, mentorship and friendship. He ended by calling the younger generation to actively pursue the field of probabilistic methods applied to power systems, thereby continuing Roy’s legacy for several decades to come. In his PMAPS2026 Merit Award acceptance speech, award winner Dr Ali Chowdhury paid glowing tributes to how much he learned under Roy’s supervision and knowledge. The PMAPS2026 conference Chair Professor Masood Parvania also paid tribute to Roy and named some young researchers in his group who were actively working on PMAPS-related topics. All the speakers paid great tributes to Roy, and the attendees showed their appreciation of Roy’s contributions by giving a warm ovation at the end of the memorial.

The memorial service for Alfredo commenced right after this. Alfredo at the time of his passing was one of three resident directors of the PMAPS IS, and also the Chair of the Board of Directors. His passing was a huge loss to the power engineering community especially in the fields of power quality, power system analysis, and probabilistic methods applied to electric power systems. After the initial remarks by Lalit, Professor Roberto Langella from Italy spoke for about 10 minutes about his long association with Alfredo – he had power point slides to assist him in his speech, and he acknowledged the contribution of Professor Guido Carpinelli in the preparation of the tribute. This was followed by short speeches by Aydogan Ozdemir and Milorad Papic, Chair of PMAPS2018 in Boise, Idaho, USA.

The PMAPS International Society (IS) organized a memorial at the IEEE PES General Meeting 2026 to celebrate the life of Professor Roy Billinton who passed away in December 2025 at the age of 90. The PMAPS IS thankfully acknowledges the help rendered by the IEEE PES in booking a room and including the details in the conference schedule on Tuesday 21st July 2026 from 4 to 6pm at the Convention Centre. The event was very well planned. The session was co-hosted by Joydeep Mitra and Lalit Goel, and some speakers had already been identified by the co-hosts prior to the session – some of these speakers were unable to attend the conference in person hence their video and/or written messages were played / presented during the session. After initial remarks on Roy and his contributions, the co-hosts showed a photo/video montage of about 14 minutes to the 50-60 attendees at the session – Wenyuan Li was thankfully acknowledged for preparing the montage. Professor Chanan Singh had requested that his speech be read in absentia by Professor Le Wei, and he obliged. Similarly, Dr Alex Schneider had requested Joydeep to read out his short tribute, and he obliged. In-person speeches were made by Professors Jaeseok Choi and Dr Milorad Papic, as per the initial arrangement. Similarly, video messages were played from Murty Bhavaraju (one of Roy’s first graduate students), Wenyuan Li, and Armando Leite Da Silva. After all the pre-arranged speeches were completed, the co-hosts requested Mark Lauby, Costas Vournas, and Lina Bertling to pay their tributes. The session went quite well. It was very well attended. The co-hosts were pleased to see Roy’s youngest son Jeff Billinton among the attendees, and they requested Jeff to tell the audience more about his father – Jeff gave a personal and touching speech.

No one else volunteered, so Lalit gave a personal tribute reminiscing about his tryst with destiny by choosing to work in an area that he had never heard about in his undergraduate days – choosing to work with such a distinguished scholar Roy which changed his life completely, and he stated that he was who he was today simply because of the guidance and friendship rendered by Roy throughout the past 35+ years. He mentioned about how Roy asked him to co-teach a tutorial at the PMAPS2006 in Stockholm, Sweden, awarded him the PMAPS2010 in Singapore, nominated him to replace Fred Turner (one of 3 founding fathers of the PMAPS IS) as one of the resident directors when Fred wanted to retire, and countless other ways in which Roy shaped his personality and thinking.

Many pictures and videos were taken at the event. Thanks to Jaeseok’s son, who is working with GM in Detroit, for being there and for recording the entire session.

Overall, it was a highly satisfying session where many of Roy’s past students, colleagues, associates and family members gave glowing tributes to the founding father of power system reliability.