Abstract

Historical power systems are emblematic examples of system of systems. Now, we are living a major evolution and perhaps a revolution in electrical grids. The term “smart grid” is used everywhere without a very precise definition. The concept of cyber-physical System of Systems seems a good framework to capture the essence of this®evolution.
The “cyber” layer is going to play a key role in the system reliability. Indeed, more and more controls are embedded in subsystems which become “intelligent” and partially autonomous. The system behavior will be imposed by the interactions between these “intelligent” agents driven by local pieces of software rather than by physical laws.
Different examples showing this trend will be presented from synchronization of inverters to aggregated game for demand response management.
We must pay attention; possible negative impacts could occur when a certain critical level of penetration of new devices and processes will be reached. It is not easy, we must review our historical approach in order to specify behaviors which were yesterday imposed by physical laws and didn’t need any specification and which will be tomorrow defined by software in local controls.