Artificial Intelligence for Sustainable Energy Systems: Smart Grids, Homeostatic Control, and Distributed Resource Optimization

Dear Colleagues,

We are navigating very challenging times, where new and radical changes in technology are arising on all fronts. In a world of hyperconnectivity, ultra-fast sensing networks equipped with IoT, ubiquitous cloud computing integrated with various AI technologies, and enormous loads of data processing which increase every year, the need for ever greater amounts of electricity is growing and becoming a pressing constraint on industries in general. As a result, we require more reliable, resilient, and sustainable high-power transmission and distribution networks. To help advance this fast-paced, ambitious agenda and contribute to the modernization of electric power networks, researchers, like ourselves, and industry pundits, in general, are called to support key areas of the development of the Smart Grid and Sustainable Energy Systems (SES) agenda, such as Energy Homeostasis Management and Distributed Resources Optimization based on AI deployment. This agenda calls for new applications of technologies with an ever-present system engineering approach, where AI and energy management take the center stage. However, along with the Smart Grid and SES agenda, service quality issues are arising as a consequence of small- and medium-sized means of distributed generation connecting to the grid, as permitted by law. Hence, in addition to leveraging rapidly configurable, scalable, and deployable distributed energy resources (DERs) such as the microgrid and employing renewables, flexible loads, AI, IOT, and smart energy management systems for electric distribution companies, the issue of how to intervene in the grid and resolve service quality issues swiftly before the problem escalates remains. DG systems such as the Virtual Power Plant (VPP) play an important role in the integration of DER into electric power distribution networks so as to provide critical assistance to the grid in a particular location whenever necessary. Thus, this Special Issue is dedicated to these pressing issues, as we face an ever-growing demand for electric power, and aims to address potential regulatory changes and new, more advanced engineering solutions to negative impacts on the grid's service quality standards and worse yet—blackouts. This Special Issue is therefore dedicated to this important area of research, not only due to its direct link to the advancement of the Smart Grid and Sustainable Energy Systems, but also because of its economic and regulatory ramifications, which undoubtedly affect every sector of countries’ economies, in particular, the energy supply and the electric power distribution sector.

Dr. Fernando Yanine
Prof. Dr. Sarat Kumar Sahoo
Guest Editors

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