Towards complex system design and management in the engineering domain – the smart grid challenge

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in “Emergence: Complexity and Organization”, 15 (2), pp. 14-22 (2013), copyright Taylor & Francis.Our world is facing a significant challenge from climate change and global warming, coupled with an increased awareness about the importance of preserving the environment. This challenge calls for us to use our resources more efficiently and develop in a more sustainable way. One important part of this move towards sustainability is a radical change in the energy sector, characterized by the introduction of new technologies providing low carbon electricity generation and the use of dynamic distribution systems such as the smart grid. This shift requires the use of new tools, especially in the modelling and simulation areas. Complexity science can help us deal with the many new challenges arising, which are mainly related to a more distributed system with a large number of dynamic, interconnected resources. New approaches to deal with these issues are presented based on two case studies