Editorial: IEEE Communications Surveys & TutorialsSpecial Section on Energy and Smart Grid

THE NEXT generation electric grid, also known as smart grid, is expected to be scalable, reliable, and secure, and to enhance efficient energy consumption and deployment of renewable and distributed energy generation. The modern communications and networking technologies will play a vital role in the future smart grid by supporting two-way energy and information flow and enabling efficient monitoring, control, and optimization of different grid functionalities and smart power devices. The emerging field of smart grid has introduced several new challenges to the communications and networking research communities. It has also created new multi-disciplinary research opportunities and potentials for collaborations with industries. Examples of smart grid technologies and applications include: smart grid communications, demand response, integration of renewable energy resources, wide area measurement and monitoring systems, smart metering infrastructure, and transportation electrification. The aim of this special issue was to collect from academic and industrial players, tutorials and surveys related to the latest smart grid and energy related technologies and architectures. Contributions on major developments and updates on smart grid systems are considered. We received a total of 15 submissions from which 5 were finally accepted for this special issue. The papers span from smart grid communications to building energy efficiency, smart metering, information management, and co-simulation of power and communication systems. In the first paper, Husheng Li et al. provide a survey on communications in cyber physical system (CPS) and a tutorial of a framework for the design of communication infrastructure in CPS. The title of their paper is “Communication Infrastructure Design in Cyber Physical Systems with Applications in Smart Grids: A Hybrid System Framework”. The studied framework is a hybrid system that features the co-existence of discrete and continuous system states. The discrete system state is the mode of the communication infrastructure while the continuous system state is the state of the physical dynamics (i.e., the power grid).