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Electronics
Special Issues
Automation and Monitoring Systems for Mining and Energy Sector Processes
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Automation and Monitoring Systems for Mining and Energy Sector Processes

A special issue of Electronics (ISSN 2079-9292). This special issue belongs to the section "Industrial Electronics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 July 2026 | Viewed by 1169

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Jarosław Joostberens

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Guest Editor
Department of Electrical Engineering and Industrial Automation, Faculty of Mining, Safety Engineering and Industrial Automation, Silesian University of Technology, 44-100 Gliwice, Poland
Interests: energy security; coal processing; industrial process automation; digital signal processing
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Aurelia Rybak

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Guest Editor
Department of Electrical Engineering and Industrial Automation, Faculty of Mining, Safety Engineering and Industrial Automation, Silesian University of Technology, 44-100 Gliwice, Poland
Interests: energy security; energy mix; critical raw materials; energy transformation; clean coal technologies
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Aleksandra Rybak

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Physical Chemistry and Technology of Polymers, Faculty of Chemistry, Silesian University of Technology, 44-100 Gliwice, Poland
Interests: critical raw materials; energy transformation; clean coal technologies
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The mining and energy sectors are among the key areas that determine safety, industrial development, and new technologies. Meeting the increasingly high requirements for energy storage and generation via both conventional and renewable sources, as well as acquiring, processing, and consuming mineral resources requires the automation and monitoring of these processes. We would like the proposed Special Issue to be a forum for exchanging knowledge through presentations of solutions, research results, and scientific achievements concerning broadly understood automation and monitoring of processes in the mining and energy sectors. Such processes include, among others:

  • generating heat and electricity from fossil fuels, renewable energy sources, and nuclear fuel;
  • energy storage, including in electrochemical, gravity, etc., as well as storage facilities;
  • the processing of fossil fuels;
  • the processing of mineral resources, as well as the acquisition of critical raw materials (e.g., REE) for energy production.

Prof. Dr. Jarosław Joostberens
Dr. Aurelia Rybak
Dr. Aleksandra Rybak
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Electronics is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • energy storage
  • energy production
  • monitoring systems

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

29 pages, 10810 KB  
Article
Malicious Manipulation of the Setpoint in the Temperature Control System of a Heating Process Based on Resistive Electric Heating
by Jarosław Joostberens, Aurelia Rybak, Aleksandra Rybak, Piotr Toś, Artur Kozłowski and Leszek Kasprzyczak
Electronics 2026, 15(8), 1568; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics15081568 - 9 Apr 2026
Viewed by 350
Abstract
This article presents the potential for maliciously influencing a control system by interfering with the program code of an industrial controller, using a temperature control system for a heating process based on resistive electric heating as an example. The presented attack scenarios are [...] Read more.
This article presents the potential for maliciously influencing a control system by interfering with the program code of an industrial controller, using a temperature control system for a heating process based on resistive electric heating as an example. The presented attack scenarios are crucial for the energy efficiency of electric heating systems, which is related to the issue of cybersecurity in the area of energy security. The aim of this research was to demonstrate that a cyberattack involving the malicious manipulation of the setpoint can be carried out in a manner invisible to the heating process operator and be difficult to detect using classical time-domain control quality indicators (time-response specifications). The first involves incorporating proportional elements with mutually inverted gains into the input and output of a closed-loop system. The second method is based on adding an additional transfer function Gm(s) in parallel to the control system. The difference between the correct and manipulated setpoints is introduced into the input, and the output signal is added to the actual (hidden) value of the controlled variable. In the first method, at the moment of starting the control system, there is a difference between the apparent (falsified) value and the ambient temperature. In the second method, the inclusion of an additional Gm(s) ensures that the apparent (falsified) value of the controlled variable matches the temperature at the moment of starting the system. PID control enables achieving satisfactory control quality in heating processes, which are characterized by high inertia and time delays. Compared to classical PID regulation, advanced control methods can, under certain conditions, provide better performance in terms of quality indicators. However, due to their high computational complexity and sensitivity to model uncertainty—particularly in methods relying on accurate system identification—PID controllers continue to be widely used in industrial practice. For this reason, the present study focuses on a control system based on a PID controller as a practical solution. Based on the results, it was found that the most effective manipulation occurred within the range from 0.9 to 1.1 of the actual setpoint value for both the first and second method, using a model with Tm between 5 s and 30 s. In these cases, the quality indicators referenced to the nominal values, determined for the falsified control system responses to a step change in the setpoint, were as follows: overshoot—0.97 and 1.30 (method 1), and 0.90 and 1.10 (method 2 for 5 s), 0.75 and 1.30 (method 2 for 30 s); settling time—1.06 (method 1), and 0.98 and 1.17 (method 2 for 5 s), 0.85 and 1.14 (method 2 for 30 s). The settling times determined for the system’s response to a disturbance were: 1.00 and 1.15 (method 1), and 1.13 and 1.16 (method 2 for 5 s), 1.12 and 1.02 (method 2 for 30 s). Based on the conducted analysis, it was demonstrated that the relatively simple setpoint manipulation methods presented can effectively mask the impact of malicious interference on the temperature value in the control system of a heating process. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Automation and Monitoring Systems for Mining and Energy Sector Processes)
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27 pages, 1963 KB  
Article
An Enhanced Artificial Gorilla Troops Optimizer-Based MPPT for Photovoltaic Systems
by Bernardo Silva and Rui Chibante
Electronics 2026, 15(3), 653; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics15030653 - 2 Feb 2026
Viewed by 363
Abstract
The low efficiency of photovoltaic (PV) systems arises from their nonlinear current-voltage characteristics, necessitating the use of maximum power point tracking (MPPT) techniques. Conventional MPPT methods are popular for their simplicity and low cost but exhibit poor performance under rapidly changing atmospheric conditions, [...] Read more.
The low efficiency of photovoltaic (PV) systems arises from their nonlinear current-voltage characteristics, necessitating the use of maximum power point tracking (MPPT) techniques. Conventional MPPT methods are popular for their simplicity and low cost but exhibit poor performance under rapidly changing atmospheric conditions, leading to considerable energy losses. Under uniform solar irradiation, these traditional approaches can locate the maximum power Point (MPP), yet their reliance on small, fixed step sizes causes oscillations and output ripple. In dynamic environmental conditions, they often fail to accurately track the true MPP. To address these challenges, this paper proposes an MPPT strategy based on the artificial Gorilla Troops Optimizer (GTO) to enhance PV performance under partial shading conditions (PSCs) and fast climatic variations. An enhanced version of the algorithm (EnGTO) was developed to further improve MPPT efficiency. Comparative simulations with the perturb and observe (P&O) method and the classic GTO demonstrate that the proposed approach achieves rapid response to environmental changes and higher accuracy and lower oscillations under PSCs, reaching efficiencies of up to 99.96% (STCs) and 99.81% (PSCs). Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Automation and Monitoring Systems for Mining and Energy Sector Processes)
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