Reflections from IEEE PES ISGT Europe 2025: Innovative Smart Grid Technologies

In October, I had the pleasure of attending the IEEE Power & Energy Society’s ISGT Europe Conference in the historic city of Valletta, Malta. This year’s theme, “Harnessing Innovation: Powering a Sustainable and Resilient Future”, framed several days of stimulating discussions, knowledge exchanges, and forward-looking research in the smart grid community. 

This year, our University of Glasgow team had three papers accepted, and I had the pleasure of presenting our research “Optimal Coordination of Local Flexibility from Electric Vehicles with Social Impact Consideration” in the Active Distribution Networks and Frequency session.

The key question we address in this paper is: How can EV charging flexibility be coordinated in a socially acceptable way, to reduce renewable energy curtailment without negatively affecting users? To address this challenge, we developed a novel AC Optimal Power Flow model, as well as a dimensional-reduction EV clustering method, to better capture user behaviour and flexibility characteristics.

Our future work will include integrating Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technologies and exploring market mechanisms to ensure fair financial compensation for EV users who contribute flexibility services.

The work also emphasised the value of joint-hub and cross-team collaboration, which played an important role in shaping the outcomes we presented.

The ISGT conference offered a broad range of insightful sessions, including panel discussions, paper presentations and poster exhibitions. The sessions I attended and found particularly engaging included, but not limited to:

• Climate Change: Developing Resilience to Increasing Vulnerabilities – Exploring how energy systems must evolve to withstand climate-driven stresses.
• Load Optimisation and Demand Response – Presenting advances in distributed flexibility, system optimisation, and user centric demand-side strategies.
• Coordinating Demand Flexibility: Challenges & Opportunities – Examining how customer behaviour influences the effectiveness of passive flexibility techniques, alongside discussions on market mechanisms, energy communities and transactive energy, as well as implications for transformer loading and network reinforcement.
• Additional discussions on distributed energy resources, flexibility markets, and the digitalisation of energy systems.

These sessions reinforced the importance of interdisciplinary research in shaping the smart, resilient energy systems of the future. 

As a member of the DARe Hub, I am dedicated to advancing a decarbonised, adaptable, and resilient transport-energy system, which is a core pillar for achieving a sustainable and resilient future. In the energy-transport nexus:

• Decarbonisation focuses on reducing dependence on fossil fuels by prioritising electrification and renewable energy integration.
• Adaptation involves modifying systems to minimise vulnerabilities to environmental, societal or extreme weather changes, ensuring continuity of service.
• Resilience highlights the ability of interconnected energy and transportation networks to withstand and recover from extreme weather events.

By addressing these dimensions together, our work focuses on modelling the transport-energy nexus to simulate increased electrification and assess climate-related impacts on the current and future transport and energy system in the UK. 

Participating in ISGT Europe was a valuable and motivating experience. It strengthened my commitment to the DARe Hub’s mission and deepened my understanding of the challenges and opportunities ahead in the transition to sustainable, robust, and resilient energy systems. I look forward to building on the insights gained in Malta, fostering new collaborations, and continuing to contribute meaningful research in this area.