Towards holonic power and energy systems – A novel ICT architecture as enabler for resilience

In the ongoing transition towards distributed Renewable Energy Sources (RES) and the concurrent transformation of critical energy infrastructures, the efficient coordination of load, storage, and generation flexibilities while avoiding grid congestion is crucial. To orchestrate the growing myriad of distributed devices, digital solutions based on scalable information and communication technologies (ICT) that go far beyond the existing state-of-the-art, are the key enablers.

To open a new avenue towards robust and resilient power and energy systems, this paper proposes the concepts of holarchies and holonic structures as underlying design principles for grid automation and coordination of flexibilities in power and energy systems. We argue that the holonic concept and its theoretic underpinning enables designing and building future resilient power systems that can cope with the otherwise overwhelming complexities of the energy transition. Our long-term vision is that the proposed holonic concept encompasses already existing trends in power and energy systems, i.e. decentralization, digitalization as well as observability and controllability improvements, into one holistic framework, whereby holistic integration is likewise pun and serious ambition. Beyond the existing holonic approach in general and partly for limited power system applications so far, our design proposal encompasses ICT infrastructures and the data domain into a consistent novel architectural approach.

Holonic structures, or holarchies, extend and build upon the recursiveness and self-similarity of autonomous sub-structures, i.e. holons, of a system. It is a system-of-systems approach and, thus, conceptionally, very different from existing and well-known multi-agent system approaches. In essence, holonic concepts allow for the formalisation of hierarchical system relations regarding physics, information, and data using a part-whole architecture. Hence, they are well-suited for the conceptualisation of automation functionality across all dimensions of the cyber-physical domain of energy infrastructures and potentially also beyond.

This paper investigates holonic structures from different novel perspectives, such as control and automation, system modeling and digital twins, as well as the corresponding ICT-infrastructure and data requirements. Three case studies are drawn upon as examples to illustrate how holonic concepts and approaches are already emerging in power and energy systems operation.

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