Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics 223, 2383–2386 (2014)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2014-02281-0

Editorial

Interdisciplinary challenges in the study of power grid resilience and stability and their relation to extreme weather events

¹ Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany
² Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 153-8505, Japan
³ FIRST, Aihara Innovative Mathematical Modelling Project, Japan Science and Technology Agency, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 153-8505, Japan
⁴ Center for Spatial Information Science, The University of Tokyo, Chiba 277-8568, Japan
⁵ Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan
⁶ Department of Physics, Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany
⁷ Institute for Complex Systems and Mathematical Biology, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK

^a e-mail: heitzig@pik-potsdam.de
^b e-mail: fujiwara@csis.u-tokyo.ac.jp
^c e-mail: aihara@sat.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp
^d e-mail: kurths@pik-potsdam.de

Received: 3 September 2014
Revised: 4 September 2014
Published online: 26 September 2014

Abstract

This topical issue collects contributions to the interdisciplinary study of power grid stability in face of increasing volatility of energy production and consumption due to increasing renewable energy infeed and changing climatic conditions. The individual papers focus on different aspects of this field and bring together modern achievements from various disciplines, in particular complex systems science, nonlinear data analysis, control theory, electrical engineering, and climatology. Main topics considered here are prediction and volatility of renewable infeed, modelling and theoretical analysis of power grid topology, dynamics and stability, relationships between stability and complex network topology, and improvements via topological changes or control. Impacts for the design of smart power grids are discussed in detail.