Guest Editorial Special Section on Microgrids

M ICROGRIDS, in particular, and smart grids, in general, are new emerging power distribution infrastructures with prominent potentials among them are realization of demand response and efficient energy consumption, integration of distributed energy resources (DERs), and high-reliability electricity delivery. DERs encompass combined heat and power, small wind turbine, photovoltaic sets, heat or electricity storage, etc. Microgrid is, additionally, attributed by grid-isolated operability bringing about serving energy during upstream network failures, say in disasters. All these benefits are motivating further demands for microgrids on a worldwide basis and in various application areas including commercial markets, industrial complexes, campus environments, military facilities, off-grid operations, community/utility settings, etc. In remote locations, where the main grid connection is either impossible or economically unjustifiable, microgrids are considered as viable alternative for the electrification. In many ways, a microgrid is just a small-scale version of the traditional power grid. Thus, majority of complicated problems in the context of large power systems appears as well in a microgrid. On the hand, the emergence of microgrids in power utility systems has raised additional technical, economical , and regulatory issues since the passivity of distribution sections does not hold any more. The high penetration of scattered power electronic-based resources and demands in microgrids, though actualizes further flexibility in the operation and conditioning , poses technical challenges particularly with regards to their coordinated and hierarchical control. Current research activities , across the world and in academia and industry environments , are not only seeking efficient technical solutions for the microgrid implementation challenges but even exploiting this unprecedented opportunity for the procurement of operational services for the bulk power utilities. Just to name a few, deployment of demand response programs for peak shaving/shifting and congestion management tasks, utilization of energy storage capabilities to compensate the fluctuation of renewable generations , and ancillary service provision through frequency-based demand regulation or time-ahead consumption scheduling. Despite the significant research efforts devoted to the micro-grid and smart grid areas, numerous problems related to real world implementations still remain unsolved. The present special section was announced with the objective of addressing and disseminating state-of-the-art R&D results on microgrids to bring together researchers from both academia and industry with the goal of fostering interactions among stakeholders. In response, 190 two-page extended abstracts were received and considered for the first round of reviews. Authors of about 60 selected abstracts were then invited to submit the full papers in …