Search Results (359)

Modern power systems are undergoing a structural transformation driven by the rapid integration of renewable energy sources, distributed energy resources, electrification, and increasing operational uncertainty. These developments expose the limitations of traditional centralized energy management and rule-based automation in highly distributed, data-intensive, and dynamically coupled energy infrastructures. In response, recent advances in artificial intelligence offer new opportunities for improving prediction, coordination, and adaptive control. This paper develops a reference architecture for Autonomous Energy Systems based on the integration of generative AI, agentic AI, digital twins, and distributed cyber–physical energy infrastructures. Rather than treating forecasting, control, simulation, and market coordination as separate research tracks, the paper organizes them within a common architectural perspective. Generative AI is positioned as a source of scenario intelligence, synthetic data generation, and uncertainty-aware forecasting, while agentic AI is framed as a bounded decision layer for perception, reasoning, planning, and coordinated action under operational constraints. The paper further clarifies the distinction between agentic AI, conventional multi-agent systems, and multi-agent reinforcement learning in energy applications. Representative application domains are discussed, including self-healing power grids, autonomous energy markets, and digital twin training environments. Major open challenges are identified in relation to scalability, physical consistency, safety verification, sim-to-real transfer, cybersecurity, interoperability with legacy infrastructures, and governance. The paper concludes by outlining a research agenda for the staged and safe development of increasingly autonomous energy systems. Full article

Reducing energy consumption while maintaining stable water quality remains a major challenge in ornamental aquaculture. This study proposes an integrated predictive and energy-aware aquaculture management framework combining Internet of Things (IoT) sensing, Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM)-based prediction, Digital Twin (DT) simulation, and Cyber-Physical System (CPS) control. Real-time sensor networks monitored dissolved oxygen (DO), ammonia (NH₃), temperature, pH, turbidity, and energy consumption in a koi pond over a 45-day deployment period. Forecasted environmental states generated by the LSTM model were validated through a physics-informed Digital Twin prior to actuator execution to improve operational reliability and control safety. Experimental results demonstrated strong agreement between the Digital Twin and observed pond dynamics, achieving R² values of 0.97 for dissolved oxygen and 0.94 for ammonia. Compared with conventional manual operation, the proposed smart predictive control mode reduced total energy consumption by 26.86%. Statistical analysis confirmed that the reduction was highly significant (p < 0.001), with average daily energy consumption decreasing from 212 ± 6.06 Wh/day under manual operation to 154.71 ± 4.52 Wh/day under smart predictive control. Full article

Artificial intelligence is increasingly embedded in cyber–physical systems that coordinate sensing, computation, communication, and control across critical and semi-critical physical environments. Within the European Union, however, its adoption is shaped not only by technological maturity and economic value, but also by an increasingly dense regulatory landscape governing data processing, cybersecurity, product security, accountability, traceability, interoperability, and safety-relevant deployment. A PRISMA ScR-informed scoping review is used to examine how European Union regulation influences artificial intelligence adoption across four representative domains: energy and smart grids, smart buildings, mobility and transport systems, and industrial and manufacturing environments. The analysis draws on primary legal sources, the peer-reviewed literature, and policy and standards-related materials, and is structured around three dimensions: regulatory barriers, technological and architectural challenges, and cross-sector implications for governance, innovation, and competitiveness. The results show that regulation functions simultaneously as a constraint and an enabling condition. It increases compliance burden, raises integration complexity, and slows deployment in higher risk settings, while promoting trustworthy artificial intelligence, stronger cybersecurity, lifecycle governance, clearer accountability, and more interoperable digital infrastructures. The central finding is that regulation is not external to artificial intelligence adoption in cyber–physical systems, but actively shapes the design space within which such systems can be developed, integrated, validated, and scaled. Future progress therefore depends on regulation-aware systems engineering, stronger implementation guidance, and cross-sector reference architectures capable of aligning legal compliance with technical architecture and operational value creation. Full article

Article discusses Digital Twins (DTs) as a solution for artificial intelligence (AI)-based modeling and metrology in Industry 5.0 and Industry 6.0 manufacturing systems. DTs enable the creation of real-time virtual replicas of physical assets, processes, and systems, increasing transparency, prediction, and optimization in manufacturing environments. By integrating AI, machine learning (ML), and advanced sensor data, DT support adaptive, self-learning production models capable of responding to dynamic operating conditions. In metrology, DTs improve measurement accuracy, traceability, and quality assurance by continuously synchronizing data between the physical and virtual domains. This technology improves process simulation, predictive maintenance, and fault detection, reducing downtime and operating costs. Furthermore, DTs facilitate human-centric production by enabling collaborative decision-making between intelligent systems and skilled workers. Their role in sustainable production is significant, supporting energy optimization, waste reduction, and lifecycle performance analysis. In Industry 6.0, DTs go beyond cyber-physical integration to encompass cognitive intelligence, ethical automation, and autonomous optimization. However, challenges remain in data interoperability, cybersecurity, model scalability, and real-time computational performance. DTs represent a revolutionary framework for the development of intelligent, resilient, and precise manufacturing ecosystems in next-generation industrial systems. Full article

Maritime transport accounts for around 3% of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, a share expected to grow without effective technological and regulatory intervention. Recent policy developments, including the IMO Revised GHG Strategy (2023), the extension of the EU Emissions Trading System to maritime transport, and the FuelEU Maritime Regulation, require ports and shipping stakeholders to evaluate multiple decarbonization technologies under complex and often conflicting constraints. These decisions involve trade-offs across economic, technical, environmental, social, and cyber–physical security dimensions, which are not adequately addressed by conventional decision-support tools. This paper introduces XAI–MCDA-HoDEM, an explainable multi-criteria decision framework integrating Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), and SHAP-based explainability. The framework explicitly incorporates cyber–physical security as a core evaluation criterion and provides transparent, criterion-level explanations of decision outcomes. Using real-world data, the methodology is demonstrated through an illustrative case study and empirically validated at the Port of Rotterdam. Results show stable and robust rankings, alignment with observed port decarbonization strategies, and improved interpretability of decision drivers. The proposed framework supports transparent, policy-relevant decision-making for the maritime energy transition. Full article

The Agricultural Energy Internet (AEI) represents an emerging systemic paradigm driven by the convergence of intelligent agriculture and rural energy transformation. It is not a simple extension of agricultural informatization or rural electrification; rather, it redefines agricultural processes—such as irrigation, greenhouse environmental control, supplementary lighting, cold-chain logistics, and agricultural machinery—as perceptible, computable, and schedulable energy-related processes, thereby enabling the deep integration of agriculture, energy, environmental management, and intelligent decision-making. This review systematically examines the evolutionary trajectory of AEI, from early agricultural digitalization and Internet of Things (IoT)-based monitoring to edge intelligence and digital twin technologies, and ultimately to the coordinated optimization of agriculture–energy–environment systems. A comprehensive technical framework is established, encompassing physical energy coupling, multi-source sensing and actuation, interconnection and interoperability, edge–cloud collaborative control, data governance, digital twin modeling, artificial intelligence-enabled optimization, and application-oriented decision-making. The review further highlights that high-quality data governance, edge–cloud collaboration, and digital twin calibration are critical enablers of the transition from visualization-oriented management to closed-loop intelligent operation. In addition, this study clarifies the complementary relationship between agricultural informatization and electrification: the former provides capabilities for perception, prediction, optimization, and coordination, whereas the latter provides a controllable execution chain. Together, they constitute the foundation of a cyber-physical agricultural energy system. Finally, frontier research directions are identified, including high-temperature solid oxide electrolysis for hydrogen production, edge AI–IoT-enabled closed-loop agricultural operation, and privacy, security, and trust mechanisms in federated edge intelligence. The findings suggest that AEI can serve as a strategic technological framework for supporting the next generation of smart agriculture toward low-carbon, resilient, and collaborative operation. Full article

The energy transition requires not only the deployment of low-carbon technologies, but also the organization of dispersed resources into forms of coordination that are operationally effective, institutionally legitimate, and socially durable. The existing transition frameworks explain institutions, niches, and system formation well, yet they are less explicit about how coordination intensifies across physical, digital, and social domains, why technically capable arrangements may remain socially fragile, and how aggregation redistributes authority and visibility. Building on Xue et al.’s Cyber–Physical–Social Systems in Energy (CPSSE) framework, this Perspective develops an interpretive elaboration of CPSSE to address that gap. Its main contribution is a shared analytical vocabulary that links uncertainty, staged coordination, and aggregation, and that recasts virtual power plants as socio-technical accomplishments rather than merely control architectures. Rather than proposing a measurement model, this article uses concepts drawn from information, coordination, and aggregation to examine what conditions render distributed energy governable, whose participation is stabilized or marginalized, and how legitimacy, accountability, and user acceptance become constitutive conditions of coordination. The Perspective contributes to energy social science by clarifying how cyber–physical capability interacts with governance conditions, participation, and institutional durability, while identifying an empirical agenda for studying how coordination is negotiated, stabilized, contested, and unevenly distributed across distributed energy systems. Full article

Insulation-material manufacturers face increasing pressure to improve productivity, cost efficiency, energy performance and worker safety while maintaining stable quality in highly constrained production environments. Existing lean and smart-manufacturing studies often examine isolated tools, individual monitoring technologies or material-level sustainability, but fewer studies provide conservative plant-level validation of an integrated intervention in insulation-material production. This study therefore examines the optimization of insulation-material production in a human-supervised cyber–physical manufacturing system through an industrial before–after intervention. The framework combines bottleneck identification, value stream mapping, SMED, selective automation, preventive maintenance and KPI-based digital monitoring. The baseline system was constrained by manual crusher loading, long changeovers, inefficient pallet transport, repeated breakdowns, scrap and limited real-time visibility. After implementation, productivity increased from 7864 to 9000 kg/day (+14.5%), monthly production costs decreased from EUR 200,000 to EUR 180,000 (−10%), breakdown frequency fell from 5 to 3 events/month (−40%), scrap decreased from 5% to 3% (−40%), crusher loading time fell from 30 to 10 min/pallet (−66%), annual energy use dropped from 500 to 450 MWh (−10%) and reported safety incidents decreased to zero during the 12-month post-implementation observation period. An OEE-based surrogate model yielded pre- and post-state theoretical capacity estimates differing by less than 1%, supporting internal consistency. The results are interpreted as descriptive and practically meaningful before–after differences because the full raw monthly dataset is commercially sensitive and classical inferential testing was not performed. The study contributes by presenting a reproducible, conservative and human-supervised CPS-oriented plant-intervention protocol rather than by claiming a fully autonomous closed-loop CPS. Full article

With decarbonization, decentralization, and digitalization, energy coordination increasingly involves many actors, heterogeneous cyber–physical data, and compliance-sensitive settlement workflows. Although blockchain has been widely discussed in this domain, existing studies are still fragmented across application-specific or platform-specific narratives. As a result, it remains difficult to compare recurring mechanisms across scenarios or to determine which blockchain functions are operationally justified in deployable energy systems. We address that fragmentation through a structured narrative review of 41 representative sources, including prior surveys, foundational technical references, and scenario-specific studies. We formulate three research questions concerning architectural positioning, cross-scenario mechanisms, and deployment barriers. On this basis, we synthesize a unified five-layer reference architecture that links off-chain physical infrastructure and trusted data acquisition to protocol-level trust anchoring, reusable business services, interface and compliance functions, and application scenarios. The framework is then used to compare five recurring scenario families, namely peer-to-peer energy trading, carbon markets and renewable energy certificates, electric vehicle charging and vehicle-to-grid services, virtual power plants, and grid flexibility coordination. The analysis shows that blockchain is most defensibly positioned as an evidence-and-settlement trust layer, rather than as a replacement for real-time physical control. It also identifies three persistent adoption bottlenecks, namely scalable ledger interaction, trustworthy cyber–physical data binding, and interoperability with regulatory and operational infrastructures. By making the trust boundary explicit and by providing a common analytical lens for cross-scenario comparison, this review clarifies the scientific contribution of blockchain to energy systems and outlines stakeholder-oriented directions for deployable hybrid designs. Full article

Power grids are increasingly exposed to high-impact disturbances driven by extreme weather, cyber–physical threats, and the growing penetration of converter-based renewable resources. In this context, Machine Learning (ML) has emerged as a key enabler for resilience-oriented monitoring, prediction, control, and restoration. This paper presents a structured review of ML strategies for power-grid resilience applications using a four-phase resilience lens (Prevention and Improvement, Control and Mitigation, Restoration, and Cyber Resilience). The literature is organized through a functional taxonomy that includes fault diagnosis, event prediction, control and stability support, restoration, and cyber resilience. In addition to the qualitative synthesis, a quantitative analysis of a dataset of 13,647 peer-reviewed publications (2015–2026) is conducted to characterize research activity across resilience functions and implementation contexts. This analysis is used to illustrate the increasing adoption of machine learning approaches and to distinguish between simulation-based and real-world applications. The results indicate a methodological shift toward Deep Learning and Reinforcement Learning for complex tasks, while federated and edge-based approaches are gaining attention for privacy preserving and real-time applications. These findings provide a structured view of current research directions and support the growing relevance of machine learning in resilience-oriented power system applications, offering a foundation for the development of intelligent and scalable cyber–physical energy systems. Full article

The current industrial production model faces major environmental, economic, and social challenges due to resource depletion, increasing energy demand, and climate change. Manufacturing significantly contributes to emissions, material consumption, and waste, making sustainable manufacturing (SM) essential for transitioning toward more resource-efficient, circular, and socially responsible systems. This study provides a structured overview of SM, focusing on enabling technologies and emerging research trends. Sustainability is analyzed through approaches such as sustainable development, cleaner production, eco-efficiency, and the circular economy. The role of key technologies—including additive manufacturing, artificial intelligence, big data analytics, the Internet of Things, digital twins, and cyber-physical systems—is examined in improving efficiency, reducing waste, and supporting circular production. A scoping review was conducted following the PRISMA-ScR guidelines using the Web of Science database, focusing on recent publications. The results highlight a growing integration of digital technologies, energy-efficient systems, and circular strategies, alongside the increasing importance of data-driven decision-making. A strong convergence between artificial intelligence, energy transition, circular economy approaches, and digital transformation is also identified. Overall, achieving sustainable manufacturing requires an integrated approach addressing environmental, economic, and social dimensions. This review maps the field and identifies key directions for future research and practice. Full article

The global network of pipelines constitutes a strategic backbone for the world economy, enabling safe and efficient transportation of energy products. These pipelines serve distinct functions in the energy supply chain: gas pipelines support emerging cleaner energy carriers; multi-product pipelines provide versatility in transporting refined liquid fuels; and oil pipelines remain dominant for crude oil delivery. Energy management across the pipeline value chain emphasizes efficiency optimization, cost reduction, and sustainability through real-time monitoring, data analytics, integrated systems, and technological innovations spanning operations, maintenance, and emission control. Despite their critical role, petroleum depots remain relatively understudied, particularly in developing and Sub-Saharan African contexts. This review synthesizes insights from over 100 studies on energy-efficient pumping, predictive control, digitalization, and socio-technical energy management in depots. Analysis of these studies highlights recurring operational and infrastructural issues that constrain energy efficiency in depots. The challenges include irregular truck-loading schedules, frequent pump cycling, aging equipment, power-supply instability, manual operator interventions, and policy-driven constraints. The reviewed studies demonstrate that anticipatory, multi-layer control strategies integrating short-horizon flow forecasting, hybrid model predictive control, and cyber–physical–human–institutional system representations outperform reactive approaches in mitigating energy losses and operational variability. Site-specific calibration and phased deployment emerge as pragmatic pathways for implementing advanced energy optimization under the constrained conditions typical of real-world petroleum depots. Full article

This study develops an advanced optimization framework for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems in multi-zone buildings with highly dynamic and uncertain internal heat loads. Unlike conventional models that assume static occupancy, the proposed approach captures time-varying, spatially heterogeneous thermal disturbances driven by occupant activity. The building is modeled as a coupled cyber-physical system integrating multi-zone thermal dynamics, nonlinear HVAC energy consumption, and behavior-driven heat generation. To address uncertainty, a distributionally robust optimization framework based on Wasserstein ambiguity sets is employed, enabling reliable performance without requiring precise probability distributions. In addition, a physics-informed reinforcement learning mechanism is incorporated to derive adaptive control policies while ensuring thermodynamic feasibility. A multi-zone coordination strategy is further introduced to manage spatial thermal interactions and maintain stable comfort across different areas. Case study results demonstrate that the proposed method reduces peak energy consumption by 28–32%, decreases comfort violation rates by 65–75%, and improves thermal stability, with temperature variance reduced by over 60% compared to baseline strategies. Full article

The global energy transition toward decarbonization and digitalization is profoundly reshaping modern power systems. Smart grids and microgrids have become core enabling technologies for accommodating high-penetration renewable energy, facilitating flexible source–load interaction, and enhancing system efficiency, reliability, and resilience. Based on the Special Issue “Advances in Smart Grids and Microgrids: Distributed Generation and Energy Storage Systems” and recent state-of-the-art progress, this paper systematically reviews key research advances in four core areas: planning and design paradigms, operation optimization and control under uncertainty, economic and market mechanism design, and resilience and cyber–physical security. Emphasis is placed on the synergistic optimization between distributed renewable generation and advanced energy storage (ES) systems in both single-energy and multi-energy architectures. Typical applications in urban areas, remote islands, and hardware-in-the-loop validation are summarized. Furthermore, major challenges and future trends are highlighted, including cross-scale interoperability, resilient control, cyber–physical security, advanced ES, electricity–carbon integrated markets, and so on. It is demonstrated that the transition from deterministic centralized frameworks to stochastic distributed multi-energy integrated systems has become an inevitable trend, and interdisciplinary collaboration will further promote the development of clean, resilient, cost-effective, and equitable smart grids and microgrids. Full article

This study aims to develop and experimentally evaluate an artificial neural network-based temperature control strategy for hot-air carrot drying within an IoT-enabled cyber-physical system. The experimental setup employs an Arduino Mega 2560 equipped with AM2302 (air temperature sensor), MLX90614 (infrared surface temperature sensor), and SHT35 (relative humidity sensor), an HX711 load cell, and a WS68 anemometer, with cloud communication provided by an ESP8266 module for remote monitoring via Wi-Fi. The neural controller, implemented using the Arduino Neurona library, regulates the dryer temperature in real time, enabling drying kinetics analysis under ANN-based thermal control to investigate its capability to maintain thermal stability. Three initial loads (2, 4, and 6 kg) were analyzed to determine the thermal efficiency. In the dehydration experiments, the 2 kg load reached a final moisture content of 10% in 4.4 h, consuming 1390 kJ with a thermal efficiency of 83%. The 4 kg load exhibited the best time–energy balance (6.6 h, 1850.0 kJ, 88%), while the 6 kg load achieved the highest efficiency (8.1 h, 2250.0 kJ, 91%). These results demonstrate the effectiveness of neural-network-based control implemented on low-cost microcontrollers to enhance thermal efficiency in food dehydration processes. Full article