Digital Twins in Power Systems: A Proposal for a Definition

The term “digital twin” was already introduced by Michael Grieves in 2002 (see Grieves, 2016), and after about 20 years the concept has found its way into the energy sector on a broader base. The first applications of digital twins were for product lifecycle management within the aerospace industry at NASA. After this initial implementation of digital twinning, the digital twin technique for lifecycle management was supplemented by networkability. Since then digital twins have been widely embraced by many industrial stakeholders, allowing machines and processes to optimize their production. Today this development is considered as the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0).