Guest Editorial Special Section on Smart Grid and Renewable Energy Resources: Information and Communication Technologies With Industry Perspective

THE successful integration of renewable energy into the power grid is expected to reduce the dependence of the grid on the fossil fuels. The potential renewable energy resources include light, wind, vibration, heat, biofuel, biomass, and tides [1], [2]. It is envisaged that the use of renewable energy will reduce the use of traditional energy resources, such as nuclear, oil, and gas, in the future and this trend will continue in order to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. The abundance of these renewable distributed energy resources (DERs) at the consumer side may help to develop distributed renewable energy generation at a large scale [3]. The DERs will likely be an integral part of the future electric grid, i.e., the smart grid [4]–[6]. A prominent feature of the smart grid is that it allows for two-way communication between the utility and its customers through information and communication technologies (ICTs) [7]. For this special section of the IEEETRANSACTIONSON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, we received 67 article submissions. After a detailed and rigorous peer-review process, we have included 19 original and unpublished articles in this special section in the domain of ICTs with an industry perspective for smart grid systems with emphasis on the integration of renewable energy resources. Therefore, this special section focuses on recent developments in the smart grid and its integration with renewable energy resources. We organize these 19 articles into four categories, which are explained in detail below.