Dealing with a complex smart grid: An integrated perspective

The electrical infrastructure of the future will be much more complex than today. It will integrate traditional and sustainable energy sources, existing and new distribution networks, customers with quite different consumption patterns and a variety of smart control systems. At this moment, however, there is no comprehensive engineering model that can cope with the higher level of complexity of future electric grids. Therefore, engineers have to use traditional models to design the next generation of electrical infrastructure, which might result in undesirable consequences, such as overlooking of some important interactions between technical systems, or ignoring relevant non-technical dimensions, like social behavior of customers, or neglecting some ultimately “moral dimensions” of smart grids and interests of economically weak stakeholders. The main objective of this paper is to ask conceptual, practical, but also philosophical questions, as well as to present analyses of cases, which could assist engineers with the development of holistic planning and designs for future electric grids. This paper combines opinions and arguments on this subject from members of IEEE Working Group on Sustainable-Future Electrical Energy System Design.