Power systems are large-scale, complex socio-technical systems that provide modern society with one of its most indispensible assets: electricity. Electricity supply is not only an irreplaceable asset in daily activities, it is also vital for operation of other critical infrastructures of the technological age. Crucial socio-economic systems depend on electricity supply to support infrastructures such as telecommunications, transportation, water and natural gas supply, as well as financial and healthcare services. Therefore, ensuring secure and reliable operation of power systems as an enabling infrastructure is crucial....@en

Ensuring access to reliable and sustainable power supply is becoming more and more challenging due to a combination of factors such as more frequent power grid outages caused by extreme weather events, the large-scale introduction of renewable energy resources that increases the complexity of the power system, but also aging infrastructure, supply and demand imbalance and power theft in some areas. Combined, all these factors can cause outages and together they can make electricity supply unreliable. The implications of this are many, ranging from minor inconveniences to major failures of critical infrastructures. A potential solution to ensure power supply during outages is to use local generation in the form of renewable resources to supply energy. This paper proposes a community-based mechanism that demonstrates that when community members can determine for themselves how excess energy generation is distributed, the power supply of specific members can be ensured. Self-determination is achieved by prioritizing and differentiating between community members as well as automatically and continuously redistributing energy, thereby adapting to sudden changes in supply and demand. Simulation results show that the proposed mechanism can be used to empower local communities to decide for themselves how local resources are distributed during events such as outages, ensuring prolonged power supply for differentiated members of affected communities. Harnessing the potential of renewable resources and smart technologies for intelligent coordination through empowerment of consumers to become pro-active participants is a promising solution for the future power systems.@en

Resilience of power systems is highly impacted by factors such as increasing severity and frequency of weather events, but also smart grid advances that introduce major operational changes in power systems. Rapidly adapting to these changing circumstances and harnessing the potential of technolo- gical advances is the key to ensuring that power systems stay operational during disturbances, thereby improving resilience. This paper addresses this challenge by presenting an approach for improving resilience through local energy resource sharing across multiple distribution systems. The approach brings together the physical and the ICT layer of power systems through a self-organization approach that automatically alters the physical grid topology and forms local energy groups in order to mitigate the effects of widespread outages. Thereby, supply and demand are locally matched, and demand met is maximized during an outage. The results demonstrate that using the proposed approach, operational resilience of impacted distribution systems is improved.@en