Methods and concepts for designing and validating smart grid systems

Abstract

Energy efficiency and low-carbon technologies are key contributors to curtailing the emission of green-house gases that continue to cause global warming. The efforts to reduce green-house gas emissions also strongly affect electrical power systems. Renewable sources, energy storage systems and flexible loads provide new system controls, but power system operators and utilities have to deal with their fluctuating nature, limited storage capabilities and typically higher infrastructure complexity with a growing number of heterogeneous components. In addition to the technological change of new components, the liberalisation of energy markets and new regulatory rules bring contextual change that necessitates the restructuring of the design and operation of future energy systems. Sophisticated component design methods, intelligent information and communication architectures, automation and control concepts, new and advanced markets, as well as proper standards are necessary in order to manage the higher complexity of such intelligent power systems that form the smart grid.