Demand-side flexibility management is a key enabler of the transformation towards the high penetration of renewable energy resources. We present a flexibility-management system called Flex4Grid, which is designed to provide a low-cost solution for residential consumers wishing to participate in power-grid balancing. The Flex4Grid system continuously forecasts the need for flexibility in a power grid and informs consumers about the flexibility-management periods. Consumers can provide their flexibility to an aggregator in exchange for a reward, which depends on the selected incentive scheme. The automation of the flexibility-management events is provided by interfacing with devices and the system via the Z-Wave and open platform communication unified architecture (OPC UA) technologies. The Flex4Grid system has been deployed in three pilots in Slovenia and Germany. A large-scale pilot in Celje, Slovenia, with 1047 participants, was used to collect statistical data regarding how consumers participate in the flexibility-management events. A critical peak-pricing incentive scheme was used in the Celje pilot. The smaller German pilots with a total of 185 participants were used for testing the technical capabilities of the system. User-satisfaction surveys were performed in all three pilots. The results indicate that the proposed approach is appropriate for engaging consumers in flexibility-management events. On average, the pilots' participants reduced their load by 10% during a peak event. The overall scores of the user-satisfaction survey were 3.4 and 3.9 on a 5-point Likert scale for the German and Slovenian pilots, respectively. These are good results for a prototype system; however, improvements to the stability and usability of the system are required.

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This paper presents an analysis of the results obtained with an efficient and powerful tool developed to recognize the exploitable vulnerabilities of websites on the internet implemented with a web-content management system (WCMS). The key feature of this ethical tool is a dynamic, automated, and fast vulnerability scan of WCMS sites and the attached plug-ins for the live internet by obeying ethical requests. The collected scan results are impressive, and the presented analysis of these results provides an insight into the internet web system’s health and the factors that influence the vulnerability levels of websites.

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