Communication infrastructures for smart grid [Guest Editorial]

Rising demands in energy due to increasing automation and expanding cities have put an enormous amount of stress on the power grid system over the past decades. There is growing awareness among governments that the current power grid will be insufficient to support our energy needs in the coming years. In the past decades, there have been several initiatives by both governments and organizations to improve the power grid system to manage the energy supply and demand efficiently. Efforts have also been made to build intelligence into the power grid system to adapt and react to different situations. On the demand side of things, the advanced metering infrastructure allows the implementation of demand side management whereby consumers can adapt their energy usage according to the load of the power grid or the price of energy.