IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - September/October 2019 - 4

from the editor

Michael Henderson

many questions
grid architecture provides answers

In This Issue
The September/October 2019 issue,
compiled by Guest Editors Steve Widergren and Jeff Taft, discusses apDigital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPE.2019.2921846
Date of publication: 19 August 2019

4

ieee power & energy magazine

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T

THE ELECTRIC POWER INDUSTRY
continues to change at an accelerating rate as a result of rising market
penetration of wind energy resources,
photovoltaics, advanced storage technologies, and distributed resources.
The interrelationships between the
structure of the electric power industry
and required technical solutions can
be very complex, and they raise many
questions that must be answered. What
combinations of wholesale and retail
electricity markets will exist, and how
should interactions between the transmission and distribution systems be
managed? Should physical control be
hierarchical, distributed, or some combination of both? What lines of responsibility and communication work best,
and how can stakeholder inputs be
considered? What effects do regulatory
structures and rules have on the entire
system and individual component designs? Clearly, workable relationships
are required, but how do we determine
and develop ones that provide reliable
and economic electric service consistent with regulatory requirements?
Grid architecture is the application
of system architecture, network theory,
and control theory to the electric power
grid. This approach can be used to answer the aforementioned questions.

proaches for understanding how various industry structures work together
from a very high level down to the detailed requirements for device controls that must be properly designed.
The articles, by authors representing
a cross section of IEEE Regions, provide descriptions of grid architecture
and approaches for establishing effective system relationships. In recounting
state-of-the-art developments, the following topics are presented:
✔ background on the discipline
of grid architecture and how it
provides a new and better way
to think about the entire grid as
it evolves and manage the overwhelming complexity of grid
modernization
✔ approaches from around the
world for coordinating and optimizing significant amounts of

distributed energy resources to
address reliability, resilience, and
market-efficiency objectives
✔ an explanation about how grid
architecture provides a number of
effective methods to address the
complexity and uncertainty in the
development of the grid-modernization strategy used in Hawai'i
✔ a report on the importance of interoperability and how upfront
work on the system's architectural
structure proves critical for identifying interface points and addressing scalability requirements
✔ an architectural approach used
to analyze a proposed conceptual framework of a market-based,
transactive coordination mechanism for distributed energy
resources for a pilot program
installed in The Netherlands
september/october 2019
IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - September/October 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - September/October 2019
