It is an exciting time for power systems as there are many ground-breaking changes happening simultaneously. There is a global concensus in increasing the share of renewable energy-based generation in the overall mix, transitioning to a more environmental-friendly transportation with electric vehicles as well as liberalizing the electricity markets, much to the distaste of traditional utility companies. All of these changes are against the status quo and introduce new paradigms in the way the power systems operate. The generation penetrates distribution networks, renewables introduce intermittency, and liberalized markets need more competitive operation with the existing assets. All of these challenges require using some sort of storage device to develop viable power system operation solutions. There are different types of storage systems with different costs, operation characteristics, and potential applications. Understanding these is vital for the future design of power systems whether it be for short-term transient operation or long-term generation planning. In this paper, the state-of-the-art storage systems and their characteristics are thoroughly reviewed along with the cutting edge research prototypes. Based on their architectures, capacities, and operation characteristics, the potential application fields are identified. Finally, the research fields that are related to energy storage systems are studied with their impacts on the future of power systems.INDEX TERMS Storage systems, electric vehicles, power system optimization, market liberalization, renewable energy, new operation schemes, power system planning.

Energy Internet is a concept proposed to harness, control, and manage energy resources effectively, with the help of information and communication technology. It improves a reliability of the system, and provides an increased utilization of energy resources by integrating the smart grid with the Internet. A scalable and reliable information and communication architecture is a crucial factor for both the operation and management of the energy Internet. The routing or managing of electrical energy is performed through an energy router (ER), synonymous with a communication router, which routes data packets instead of energy packets. In this paper, a holistic review of the energy Internet evolution in terms of the architecture, types of ERs, and the benefits and challenges of its implementation is presented. An exhaustive summary of the designs and architectures of the different types of ERs is also presented in this paper. The benefits of the energy Internet, along with the challenges of its implementation on a large-scale distributed architecture with the inclusion of renewable energy resources, is discussed. Finally, future prospects for the energy Internet for achieving guaranteed reliability and security is presented.

Communication plays a key role in the effective management of virtual power plants (VPPs). For effective and stable operation of VPPs, a reliable, secure, and standardized communication infrastructure is required. In the literature, efforts were made to develop this based on industry standards, such as the IEC 60870-5-104, OpenADR 2.0b and IEC 61850. Due to its global acceptance and strong object-oriented information models, IEC 61850 standard-based communication is preferred for smart grid operations, including VPPs. However, communication models based on IEC 61850 present cybersecurity and scalability challenges. To address this issue, this paper presents an eXtensible Message Presence Protocol (XMPP)-based IEC 61850 communication for VPPs. Firstly, a full mapping of IEC 61850 messages for VPP energy management is carried out. Secondly, XMPP-based single- and multiple-domain communications are demonstrated. Finally, a federation concept has been added to facilitate communication in multi-domain communication networks. These models show that a standard communication model can be implemented with IEC 61850 and XMPP, not only for VPPs but other wide-area communication implementations in smart grids. This not only facilitates plug-and-play (PnP) with easy component additions but secures smart grid communication against cyber-attacks.

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