IEEE Innovative Smart Grid Technologies (ISGT)

The theme of the conference is “Moving to a Self-Driving Grid.” The electric power system is undergoing a fundamental transformation due to dramatic increase in deployments of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs), increase in adoption of smart loads, regulatory changes and the emergence of new business models and grid services. These are driven primarily by the need for decarbonization, evolving customer needs, and need for flexible and resilient operation of the larger system. The changes are resulting in an enormous increase in the system complexity where the number of active control points in the grid is too high to be managed manually. Therefore, there is need for innovation in design, integration, operation, testing and evaluation of newer technologies and processes in order to enable and accelerate progress towards increased levels of automation. Additionally new structural and architectural constructs will be critical for allowing local decision-making which is a steppingstone in the transition to a “self-driving” grid.