Guest Editorial New Trends of Demand Response in Smart Grids

The papers in this special section focus on technological and system developments in designing power grids. The power grid is a large interconnected infrastructure for delivering electricity from power plants to end users. Now, traditional grids are facing kinds of challenges, and the world is proposing to modernize legacy and make strides toward smart grid. It is widely recognized that demand response is the core feature of smart grid, which can be formally defined as ???changes in electric use by demand-side resources from their normal consumption patterns in response to changes in the price of electricity, or to incentive payments designed to induce lower electricity use at times of high wholesale market prices or when system reliability is jeopardized. With the support of the advanced information and communication technologies, demand response is able to improve the efficiency, reliability, economics, and sustainability of power generation, distribution, and utilization.