2013 2nd International Workshop on Software Engineering Challenges for the Smart Grid (SE4SG)

The emerging smart grid is incorporating intelligence into power distribution networks. A smart grid provides the capabilities to handle the challenges of increasing complexity in the bulk power grid, to respond to demand growth, support renewable energy sources and satisfy the requirements for enhanced, adaptive service quality. Achieving these goals requires a framework for the cohesive integration of communication and information technologies, interconnected in a complex energy and information real-time control network. This framework must provide the principle properties of smart grids, including self-healing, availability and responsiveness to demand and supply variability. The smart grid poses new challenges for security and privacy because of the increased possibilities for information exchange. The realization of smart grid benefits requires a major sustained effort from the power and software industry. This effort must deliver advanced software solutions, such as advance metering infrastructures that operate in real-time for the purposes of metering, communication, monitoring and control. Collectively, these emerging solutions pose a broad range of software engineering (SE) challenges, creating the need for members of the SE research community to interact with the power engineering community and other communities to address these issues. This workshop will facilitate this collaboration by bringing together members of these communities. They will be able to share perspectives and present findings from research and practice relevant to smart grid software and services. The goal of the workshop is to facilitate the maturing of software engineering methods and tools for smart grids and foster the communication between the different communities. Building upon the results from last year’s first edition of the workshop, one aim is to broaden the target audience and attract even more researchers and practitioners to form a targeted and cohesive community.