Special Issue on Interoperability for the Energy Sector

Guest Editor: Sebastian Lehnhoff

From a technical point of view, the increasing amount of renewables and distributed generation is imposing novel problems on the existing energy distribution grid and its communication infrastructure. The paradigm of power generation following the demand that has been well established over the last century has to change. With unpredictable generation and subsequent fluctuating power feed-in to the grid by solar and wind power plants, it becomes necessary for the demand side to adjust itself to the overall energy generation in order to ensure a stable and reliable power supply under increasingly stochastic demand and supply situations.

New technologies like smart meters, home automation and demand side management through web 2.0 technologies are expected to be the major cornerstones for addressing issues like controlling electric vehicles or micro-CHPs which in general are more predictable than stochastic generation. Charging and de-charging of EVs may become of interest to provide significant distributed storage capacities. Yet, this may only be achieved through integrating even more ICT technology into the grid to make it smarter and to increase the overall level of automation. One of the key issues identified by smart grid roadmaps all around the world are standards and interoperability issues connected with this development. This issue of the IBIS magazine aims at outlining important solutions and applications of improving the integration of ICT between different systems of the grid.
Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

* Coordination mechanisms for automated ICT-systems
* Integration of electric vehicles
* Demand side management processes and their integration into energy management systems
* Coordination of distributed generation through means of interoperable systems
* Real-time process communication in smart grids
* Communication and Data requirements for safety critical real-time communication in future smart grids
* Standardization issues