By Jeremy Carden and Dragan Popovic E grids. therefore, developing distribution management systems (DMSs) proved to be necessary. EMSs and DMSs are associated with market management systems, a tool designed for system operators to reliably manage transmission and distribution grids on the electricity market. the incorporation of new energy resources- renewables (wind and photovoltaic)-in transmission grids and a wide gamut of distributed energy resources (DEr), as well as most of the characterizations associated with the smart grid concept motivated the second very strong driver for upgrading both EMS and DMS. these upgrades have image licensed by ingram publishing EnErgy ManagEMEnt SyStEMS (EMSs) wErE introduced in the vertically organized power industry five decades ago. after the restructuring of the power industry and the founding of the electricity market, four more-orless independent players appeared in this market-generation, transmission, distribution, and consumption. this was a strong driver for the introduction of new tools to manage very complex distribution-consumption elements of power systems. the transfer of an EMS from the transmission to the distribution environment was not possible due to the different natures and operation criteria of these two types of Closed-Loop Volt/Var Optimization Addressing Peak Load Reduction Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPE.2017.2780962 Date of publication: 21 February 2018 march/april 2018 1540-7977/18©2018IEEE ieee power & energy magazine 67