Special Session

Smart Grids – Challenges and opportunities

Mihai GAVRILAS,
"Gheorghe Asachi" Technical University of Iasi, mgavril@ee.tuiasi.ro

Elena HELEREA,
"Transilvania" University of Brasov, helerea@unitbv.ro

The "20/20/20" target for the year 2020 (increasing renewable supplies to 20% of total demand, reducing energy consumption by 20% and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 20%) is an ambitious objective of the European Union’s strategy in energy and climate policies.

The achievement of these targets raises the challenge of transforming the existing transmission and distribution networks to gather more "intelligence", enabling higher security, quality and efficiency. Smart Grids add to the "conventional" electricity network a communication network and a plethora of software applications to allow for the intelligent control of generation and demand, as well as the configuration of the network.

"Smart Grids – Challenges and opportunities" aims to provide information on the state of the art and new solutions for the electricity network of the future on the following topics:

• Regulatory aspects
• Information & Communication Technology (ICT) for Smart Grids
• Impact over network operation and maintenance
• Impact over network planning
• Impact over power quality
• Energy policies and smart grids
• New electricity market perspectives
• Load profiling, smart metering and demand response
• Impact over educational and research programs