Process Safety and Control Strategies for Urban Clean Energy Systems

Dear Colleagues,

One of the most critical challenges for sustainable urban development is ensuring the safe integration and operation of clean energy technologies in densely populated environments. Advances in clean energy safety are being pursued at multiple scales—from interconnected city-wide smart grids and district heating/cooling networks, through industrial-scale renewable generation facilities and storage hubs, down to distributed rooftop solar, EV charging infrastructure, and microgrids within neighborhoods and individual buildings. The technologies under scrutiny vary widely, including solar photovoltaics, wind energy, advanced battery storage (stationary and mobile), hydrogen production, storage and fueling, geothermal systems, smart grid controls, and the integration interfaces with existing urban infrastructure. Ensuring the inherent and operational safety of these systems is paramount for their successful urban adoption. Modeling, simulation, and data-driven analysis play an indispensable role in understanding and enhancing safety as they provide powerful, cost-effective tools for predicting hazards, evaluating risks, designing inherently safer systems, and developing robust emergency response strategies.

This Special Issue on “Process Safety and Control Strategies for Urban Clean Energy Systems” will curate novel advances in research that either apply modeling, simulation, or advanced data analytics as core components for analyzing the safety aspects of urban clean energy systems, or present the development of new and improved safety assessment methodologies, models, or digital tools.

Topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Research on fires, explosions, or toxic release scenarios involving urban renewables or storage (e.g., battery thermal runaway or hydrogen leaks).
• Risk assessment frameworks and models for integrating diverse clean energy sources within complex city grids and existing infrastructure.
• The development and application of computational tools for safety monitoring, early warning systems, and emergency response planning for urban energy networks.
• Life cycle safety analysis (LCSA) or environmental risk assessment (ERA) specific to clean energy technologies in urban settings.
• The safety implications and modeling of cyber–physical security for smart city energy systems.
• Reliability modeling and failure prediction for clean energy components deployed in diverse urban environments.
• Safety optimization in the design, planning, and operation of city-scale clean energy systems.

Thanks for your contributions, and I hope you consider participating in this timely Special Issue.

Dr. Zhilei Wang
Dr. Qingxin Ba
Dr. Congliang Ye
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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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. Processes is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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.

• urban clean energy safety
• renewable energy risk assessment
• battery storage hazards
• hydrogen infrastructure safety
• safety simulation frameworks
• failure mode prediction