Topic of the Speech: Enabling Climate-Neutral Cities: The Potential Contribution of Energy Communities and Relevant Smart Infrastructures

Carlo Alberto Nucci is Full Professor at the University of Bologna. He is the author of more than 460 scientific articles and 13 book chapters on topics such as lightning protection of electrical systems, blackouts, smart grids, smart cities and energy communities. He is presently serving as the Italian Representative in the HE Mission “Climate-Neutral and Smart cities”, as the Chair of the International Conference on Lightning Protection, ICLP, as co-chair of the International Conference on Power Systems Transients, IPST, and as vice-chair of the Executive Board of the Power Systems Computation Conference, PSCC. He is an IEEE Life Fellow, CIGRE Fellow and CSEE Fellow, and has received international awards, including the CIGRE Technical Committee Award and the ICLP Golde Award. He is an Honorary Doctor of the University of Bucharest, a member of Italian Science Academies (Bologna and Milano), and a Distinguished Invited Professor at Tsinghua University (2023–2026).

Cities are at the forefront of the energy transition, concentrating most energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Within the framework of the EU Horizon Europe Mission Climate Neutral and Smart Cities, energy communities represent an important enabling element - though not a standalone solution - for supporting urban decarbonization and citizen engagement.

This keynote discusses energy communities from an electrical power systems perspective, with particular emphasis on advanced monitoring, control, and optimization infrastructures. The lecture focuses on the role of smart energy management systems, real-time measurements, forecasting tools, and digital twins in coordinating distributed generation, storage, and flexible loads within urban distribution networks.

Drawing on real urban case studies and real-time simulation of medium-voltage systems, the talk illustrates how optimized control strategies can improve local balancing, reduce operating costs, and support secure and resilient grid operation. Energy sharing and internal coordination mechanisms are addressed as part of this broader technical framework. The keynote concludes by highlighting the need for robust control architectures and realistic system integration to enable energy communities to effectively contribute to the objectives of climate-neutral and smart cities.

Topic: Power System Resilience against extreme natural phenomena

Nikos Hatziargyriou is since 1984 with the Electrical and Computer Engineering School, National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Professor in Power Systems since 1995, and Professor Emeritus since 2022. He is also part-time Professor at the University of Vaasa, Finland. He is visiting professor at Tsinghua and Hefei Universities. He has over 10 years of industrial experience as Chairman and CEO of the Hellenic Distribution Network Operator (HEDNO) (2015-2019) and as Executive Vice-Chair and Deputy CEO of the Public Power Corporation (PPC) (2007-2012), responsible for the Transmission and Distribution and the Islands Divisions. He has authored more than 400 journal and 600 conference proceedings papers. He is included in Thomson Reuters and Web of Science lists of top 1% most cited researchers and in global lists of top 2% Scientists by Stanford University. He is Life Fellow of IEEE, Fellow of CSEE and honorary member of CIGRE. He is 2020 Globe Energy Prize laureate, recipient of the 2017 IEEE/PES Prabha S. Kundur Power System Dynamics and Control Award and the 2023 IEEE Herman Halperin Electric Transmission and Distribution Award. He was the Chair of the Power System Dynamic Performance Committee of IEEE and Editor in Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Power Systems. He is currently EiC-at-Large for IEEE PES Transactions.

Extreme natural phenomena, primarily driven by climate change, have caused extensive damages in power systems, leaving millions of customers without electricity for several hours. Such events include wildfires in Australia, the Americas, and South Europe; flooding events in the UK, Italy and Spain; storms in the Americas; and earthquakes in Pacific Ring, etc. Handling with their sequences requires revisiting the current, traditional reliability frameworks in power system design and operation, that center on so-called credible (or “average”) outages, such as single or double faults, commonly referred to as N-1 or N-2 contingencies. In this presentation, the concepts between reliability and resilience are clearly distinguished and the key dimensions and frameworks of resilience are explained. Planning measures, like hardening infrastructure and Operational strategies such as preventive unit commitment, defensive islanding, and microgrid deployment for enhancing resilience, are briefly described. The special case of resilience against prolonged periods of very low RES production (“dunkelflaute” events) in RES dominated power systems is finally presented and a framework for long term resource planning is briefly outlined.

Topic of the Speech: System Integrity Protection Schemes Against Cascading Events and Blackout

Vladimir Terzija (IEEE Fellow, Humboldt Fellow) is a Professor of Energy Systems & Networks at Newcastle University, U.K. He received a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Belgrade, Serbia. From 2021 to 2023, he was a Full Professor at Skoltech, Russian Federation. From 2006 to 2020, he held the EPSRC Chair Professorship at the University of Manchester, U.K. From 2000 to 2006, he was a Senior Specialist in switchgear and distribution automation at ABB, Ratingen, Germany. From 1997 to 1999, he was an Associate Professor at the University of Belgrade, Serbia. His current research interests include smart grid applications; wide-area monitoring, protection and control; multi-energy systems; big data analytics; and applications of complexity science in power systems. From 2015 to 2025, he served as Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Electrical Power and Energy Systems. From December 2025, Prof. Terzija is the Founding Editor-in-Chief of the Nature Partner Journal “Electrical Systems and Resilience. Prof Terzija is a recipient of the National Friendship Award of China.

This lecture addresses the growing vulnerability of modern electrical power systems to cyber-attack-induced cascading outages and large-scale blackouts, highlighting the role of system complexity, uncertainty, and limited situational awareness in amplifying operational risks. It examines how cyber attacks targeting measurement, communication, and control layers can distort system visibility and trigger cascading failure mechanisms, and discusses the use of satellite-based time-synchronised technologies, such as PMUs and time-synchronised waveform measurements, to support Wide Area Monitoring Systems and enhance real-time situational awareness. The lecture then presents controlled islanding as a System Integrity Protection Scheme for mitigating cascading propagation, illustrating its planning, implementation, and post-islanding stabilisation through detailed case studies and simulations. The key findings emphasise the importance of coordinated cyber–physical resilience strategies, human–machine interaction, and advanced protection schemes to strengthen system robustness and prevent widespread outages.

Topic of the Speech: Enhancing Power System Flexibility by Decentralized Game-Theoretic Orchestration of Energy Storage Systems

Prof. Alfredo Vaccaro received the M.Sc. (Hons.) degree in electronic engineering from the University of Salerno, Salerno, Italy, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada. Currently, he is a Full Professor of Electric Power Systems at the Department of Engineering of University of Sannio. His research interests include reliable computing-based methods for uncertain power system analysis, and self-organizing architectures for decentralized smart grids computing. Prof. Vaccaro is the Editor in Chief of Smart Grids and Sustainable Energy, Springer Nature, Associate Editor of IEEE Trans. on Smart Grids, IEEE Trans. on Power Systems, IEEE Power Engineering Letters, and past-Chair of the IEEE Power System Operation, Planning and Economics Committee-Technologies and Innovation Subcommittee. He is a Fellow of IEEE.

In modern power systems, flexibility services are primarily delivered by a large number of distributed energy storage systems coordinated by an aggregator to collectively supply ancillary services to transmission and distribution system operators. In this context, orchestrating the available systems to satisfy grid requests, while accounting for their state of charge, operating state, technical limits, and charging/discharging efficiencies, and ensuring users' privacy, represents a complex and challenging problem. For this purpose, this talk analyses the role of decentralized aggregation frameworks based on Cournot non-cooperative game theory. The main idea is to formalize a price signal function that implicitly guides the flexibility resources to satisfy grid power requests while preserving privacy. Customized utility functions are integrated into the orchestration process to model the marginal costs associated with the charging and discharging of the storage systems, considering their actual operation state.

Detailed simulation results obtained on realistic operation scenarios are presented and discussed, demonstrating that game-theoretic-based orchestration enables flexibility sources to collectively provide an aggregate response that satisfies grid requests using only a price signal, without requiring centralized direct control of the storage systems.

Topic of the Speech：Artificial Intelligence in Power and Energy: Transforming the path to a Sustainable, Efficient Energy Future and Empowering Professionals

 Zita Vale graduated in Electrical Engineering in 1986, received the PhD degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 1993, and the Agregação title (Habilitation) in 2003 from the University of Porto, Portugal.

She is Full Professor in the Polytechnic of Porto and leads the research activities on Intelligent Power and Energy Systems at GECAD – Research Group on Intelligent Engineering and Computing for Advanced Innovation and Development.

She coordinated/participated in more than 60 R&D projects and published more than 200 journal papers. Her scientific research focus on Artificial Intelligence models for Power and Energy Systems Operation, Electricity Markets, Energy Communities, and Renewables.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) concepts and methods have a huge potential to build effective solutions for power and energy systems. Supporting large power systems management and control, automating energy management in buildings and industrial plants, and driving efficient electric mobility, AI-based models can pave the path for a better energy future. Facing the needs for sustainable and efficient power and energy systems as well as the challenges of high energy costs, intensive use of renewable energy sources,  and dynamic electricity and energy markets, AI will have a leading role in power and energy future.

AI can also bring a human centric perspective to the energy business with a new paradigm in which consumers and prosumers goals, needs, and comfort are of main importance while ensuring the fair and efficient participation of all the involved actors, from small consumers, prosumers, and energy communities to large industrial players and utilities.

This talk will discuss how AI-based models can be designed using data driven and knowledge-based approaches and cover AI traditional paradigms as well as the boom of machine learning applications and the new Large Language Models (LLM) and agentic approaches.

The talk will also discuss and bring new perspectives to a central question that arises in this environment: How will power and energy systems professionals deal with the challenges of designing and using these AI models and what will be the AI impact on their professional lives?