Workshop: Smart Electricity Grids: Impact and Role of Information Technology (Half-day Workshop)  
Leaders: Mladen Kezunovic and  Jeff Dagle

A smart electricity grid uses digital technology to improve reliability, security, and efficiency of the electric system: from large generation, through the delivery systems to electricity consumers and a growing number of distributed-generation and storage resources. While the existing grid utilizes extensive computational and communications resources, there are emerging opportunities to enhance and coordinate these information networks in such a way that our economy will be transformed. Among other goals, this includes interfacing the renewable generation, engaging customers in energy efficiency programs, automating the grid monitoring and operation, visualizing grid behavior, and securing grid’s cyber infrastructure from intrusions and malicious attacks. Recently, many stakeholders in North America have engaged in defining the smart grid characteristics, including the U.S. Department of Energy and its laboratories, Electric Power Research Institute, National Institute of Standards and Technologies, National Electric Manufacturers Association, the Galvan Initiative, National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, etc. One of the main characteristics of the future electricity grid is wide spread application of advanced information technology and system sciences methodology, of particular interest to HICSS participants.

This Workshop will bring together the experts from the Electric Power Systems track with experts from several other HICSS tracks (e.g. Organization, Software, Internet, Decision Technologies) to discuss synergies of the information technology uses in the smart grid and other application domains. The outcome will be an inventory of information technology relevant for the future smart grid deployment.

Mladen Kezunovic (kezunov@ece.tamu.edu) has been with TAMU since 1986. He worked for Westinghouse Electric Corp., Pittsburgh, PA, 1979-1980 and the Energoinvest Company, in Europe 1980-1986. His main research interests are application of intelligent methods to power system monitoring, control, and protection, including the smart grid technologies. He is a Fellow of the IEEE.


Jeff Dagle (jeff.dagle@pnl.gov) is an electrical engineer with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. He has extensive experience with advanced power system analysis and simulation software representing state-of-the-art utility planning and analysis software packages. He provides technical support regarding infrastructure information assurance technologies, systems and approaches.