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 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：From Whole-Energy-System Thinking to Net-Zero Action

 Jianzhong Wu is Professor of Multi-Vector Energy Systems and Head of the School of Engineering at Cardiff University, UK, and Co-Editor-in-Chief of Applied Energy. He is Co-Director of the UK Energy Research Centre, the EPSRC Supergen Energy Networks Impact Hub, and the Hydrogen Integration for Accelerated Energy Transition (Hi-ACT) Hub. He also serves on multiple national advisory bodies, including the UK Government Taxonomy Energy Working Group, the Scottish Power Energy Networks Independent Net Zero Advisory Council, the Welsh Government Advisory Group on the Future Electricity Grid, and the Royal Society Working Group on Thermal Energy Efficiency in Industry. Professor Wu is internationally recognised as a pioneer of multi-vector energy systems and peer-to-peer energy trading. He has contributed to more than 70 major European, UKRI, and industry projects and has authored over 300 peer-reviewed publications, including 16 Clarivate ESI Highly Cited Papers and five papers in Nature portfolio journals. He has co-authored several books, including “Smart Grid: Technology and Applications” (2012, Wiley), “Smart Electricity Distribution Networks” (2017, CRC) and "The Future of Gas Networks" (2019, Springer). He is President of the UK Branch of China Electrotechnical Society, Associate Editor-in-Chief of CSEE Journal of Power & Energy Systems, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of IET Energy Systems Integration, member of the Steering Committee of the IEEE PES Energy Internet Coordinating Committee, and member-at-large of the IEEE Technical Committee on Carbon Neutrality. He is a Fellow of IEEE, the Energy Institute, and the Learned Society of Wales. He is the Mary Shepard B. Upson Visiting Professor at Cornell University, listed among Stanford/Elsevier’s Top 2% Scientists and has been named a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher 2025, one of 186 awardees globally in Engineering.

The global drive towards Net Zero is triggering an unprecedented transformation of energy systems. In the UK, the Climate Change Act and legally binding carbon budgets have created one of the world’s most ambitious policy frameworks for decarbonization, with a target of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The UK has already made strong progress, particularly in decarbonizing the power sector, but the next phase will be far more challenging and will require deep emissions reductions across heat, transport, industry and the wider economy. For more than a decade, researchers and policymakers have emphasised the need for whole-energy-system thinking, recognizing the interactions and interdependencies between electricity, nature gas, heating, cooling, hydrogen and transport. However, the critical challenge today is no longer only understanding the whole energy systems, instead it is moving from thinking to action, and doing so at the speed and scale required for the Net Zero transition. This talk uses the UK as a case study to explore how integrated energy systems can enable practical and scalable decarbonisation. It introduces the UK policy landscape and the evolving energy system, and focuses on several key action areas: the rapid development of clean power and the growing need for system flexibility; the integration of hydrogen into energy systems; the decarbonisation of heat and large-scale reuse of waste heat; the co-evolution of low-carbon transport and power systems; the role of long-duration energy storage; and how artificial intelligence can accelerate the transition. Together, these topics illustrate how whole-system thinking can be translated into coordinated, real-world action to deliver Net Zero.