The fast development and integration of distributed energy resources (DERs) are changing the management and operation of power systems. Currently, more coordination between the owner of the resource, resource operator, and system operator is needed to ensure the required quality of service. The emergence of prosumers and aggregators, such as virtual power plants, fleet operators, or microgrids, introduced a new level of management in power systems. Additionally, new regulation frameworks are incentivizing the creation of energy communities, federated power plants, collective self-consumption, local markets and groups for balancing reserve. This new paradigm imposes the use of new methodologies in long term and operational planning, and real-time operation, allowing better management of the existing resources and more coordination between actors. This Special Issue will focus on algorithms, models, methods, technologies, and applications that foster improvements in the management of DERs, taking into consideration better coordination with actors and different business models. Potential topics include, but are not limited to, DER optimization, peer-to-peer trading, energy business models, actor coordination, microgrids, energy communities, federated power plants, virtual power plants, fleet operators, system operation, flexible management, demand response, ICT infrastructures, and the use of distributed ledger (e.g. blockchain) in energy services and trading mechanisms.
Keywords: distributed energy resources; microgrids; energy communities; virtual power plants; federated power plants; distribution system; energy Markets; electricity markets; energy Management System.