ABSTRACT
Our economy places increased demand for reliable, disturbance-free electricity. The electric power grid is quite different from other infrastructure systems such as gas, oil or water networks. A distinguishing characteristic of electricity, for example, is that there is no way to store significant amounts of energy; thus the system is fundamentally operating in real-time. For this and related reasons, energy infrastructure systems have a unique combination of characteristics that makes control and reliable operation challenging:
• attacks and disturbances can lead to widespread failure almost instantaneously
• billions of distributed heterogeneous infrastructure components are tightly interconnected
• a variety of participants – owners, operators, sellers, buyers, customers, data and information providers, data and information users – interact at many points
• the number of possible interactions increases dramatically as participants are added – no single centralized entity can evaluate, monitor, and manage them in real time
• the relationships and interdependencies are too complex for conventional mathematical theories and control methods.
