Renewable energy sources are one key enabler\ud to decrease greenhouse gas emissions and to cope\ud with the anthropogenic climate change. Their intermittent\ud behavior and limited storage capabilities present a\ud new challenge to power system operators to maintain\ud power quality and reliability. Additional technical complexity\ud arises from the large number of small distributed generation\ud units and their allocation within the power system.\ud Market liberalization and changing regulatory framework\ud lead to additional organizational complexity. As a result,\ud the design and operation of the future electric energy system\ud have to be redefined. Sophisticated information and\ud communication architectures, automation concepts, and\ud control approaches are necessary in order to manage the\ud higher complexity of so-called smart grids. This paper provides\ud an overview of the state of the art and recent developments\ud enabling higher intelligence in future smart grids.\ud The integration of renewable sources and storage systems into the power grids is analyzed. Energy management\ud and demand response methods and important automation\ud paradigms and domain standards are also reviewed

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This paper reports on industrial deployment of multi-agent systems and agent technology. It provides an overview of several application domains and an in-depth presentation of four specific case studies. The presented applications and deployment domains have been analyzed. The analysis indicates that despite strong industrial involvement in this field, the full potential of the agent technology has not been fully utilized yet and that not all of the developed agent concepts and agent techniques have been completely exploited in industrial practice. In the paper, the key obstacles for wider deployments are listed and potential future challenges are discussed.

Agent-based technology can potentially solve complex, dynamic decision processes that are distributed. By enabling networks of autonomous yet interacting reasoning elements, this technology provides an alternative to the centralized systems prevailing in industry. tiate with the workshops or even the con-JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2005 www.computer.org/intelligent 31 FIPA communication Function block/ladder application Agent high-level decision making (C++, Java) FIPA communication Function block communication Programmable-logic-controller-based automation controller Function block/ladder application Agent high-level decision making (C++, Java)Figure 4. Two holonic agents, which combine function block applications and software agents. The thin arrows represent non-real-time communication; the thick arrows indicate real-time communication.

The intention of this paper is to provide an overview of using agent and service-oriented technologies in intelligent energy systems. It focuses mainly on ongoing research and development activities related to smart grids. Key challenges as a result of the massive deployment of distributed energy resources are discussed, such as aggregation, supply-demand balancing, electricity markets, as well as fault handling and diagnostics. Concepts and technologies like multiagent systems or service-oriented architectures are able to deal with future requirements supporting a flexible, intelligent, and active power grid management. This work monitors major achievements in the field and provides a brief overview of large-scale smart grid projects using agent and service-oriented principles. In addition, future trends in the digitalization of power grids are discussed covering the deployment of resource constrained devices and appropriate communication protocols. The employment of ontologies ensuring semantic interoperability as well as the improvement of security issues related to smart grids is also discussed.