The Proper Role of Agents in Future Resilient Smart Grids

Abstract

Smart Grids are in focus of several international R&D past and present efforts since at least a decade. Smart Grids is a well-known metaphor for future power grids. However, the meaning, or semantics of the concept has, naturally, changed due to increased understanding of the inherent complexities of the subject matter. The driving forces behind the efforts on Smart Grids include: • Demands of integrating new energy sources such as Distributed Energy Resources (DER) and Renewable Energy Resources (RES) in a massive way into generation, transmission and distribution of future energy systems. • Establishment of a de-regulated customer oriented energy markets, including new types of energy based service markets. • Design and implementation of resilient and trustworthy services coordinating and monitoring use-case dependent sets of stakeholders during operations. The transition from today's mostly hierarchical power grids towards tomorrow's Smart Grids poses several challenges to be properly addressed and harnessed. We argue that proper use of agent technologies is a key technology towards this end. Furthermore, we argue that design and implementation of Smart Grids have to be supported by Configurable Experiment Platforms to carter for the under specifications of such systems. Resilience of systems has several aspects. We focus on resilience related to different kinds of cyber attacks and self-healing. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.