Towards a Seamless Integration of DER in Power Systems: Future Prospects, Challenges and Solutions

Dear Colleagues,

The ever-increasing worldwide interest in reducing CO2 emissions is pushing the integration of renewable energy technologies and other environmentally-friendly distributed energy resources (DER) to unprecedented levels. In addition, the strong trend toward the electrification of the energy system, especially in the transportation sector, will demand more from the existing transmission and distribution networks, which will very likely host a higher share of renewable energy sources in the overall energy mix. These changes will require the development of innovative approaches and technology solutions to ensure the security of operation and improve system resilience, which should also take into account the increasing digitalization of the energy sector with more advanced communication technologies and, thus, more data potentially available.

Part of the solution for these challenges will most certainly come from enhancing and strengthening the interaction between TSO and DSO, which will contribute to increasing power systems’ flexibility and better managing generation back-up capacity. Simultaneously, distribution grid connected resources are expected to have a more active role regarding overall system stability, thus demanding new, expedited meddling approaches addressing dynamic behavior in the distribution to the transmission grid boundary.

The growing interaction between different energy systems (multienergy networks) is another challenge that needs to be addressed and that can help to ensure the security of supply while integrating high shares of renewable energy.

With this Special Issue, we are looking for original research that proposes, tests and validates new methodologies for future power systems’ operation and planning, considering the challenges mentioned above, and that addresses, in particular, the following subjects:

• Transmission/distribution network operation and planning, considering technology adoption rates and the spatiotemporal uncertainty of DER behavior;
• Joint operation and planning of distribution and transmission networks;
• Predictive management and control of distribution and transmission networks with high shares of renewable energy;
• Strategies to improve system resilience in the face of increasing variability from renewable generation and consumption;
• Methodologies to exploit synergies between different energy networks (electricity, gas, district heating/cooling, transportation);
• DER participation in future electricity markets under uncertainty;
• Design of policy incentives to reduce uncertainty and optimize the spatiotemporal impacts of DER in power systems’ operation and planning;
• Methods to foster consumer participation in flexibility services and to reduce uncertainty;
• Aggregated modeling of active distribution grids;
• Autonomous operation of clusters of microgrids.

Dr. Filipe Soares
Prof. Dr. Carlos Moreira
Dr. André Madureira
Guest Editors

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• distributed energy resources
• clusters of microgrids
• flexibility
• multienergy networks
• DSO–TSO coordination
• future electricity markets
• energy storage
• electric mobility