ABOUT THIS ISSUE IEEE Electrification Magazine / DECEMBER 2016 2 HILE MEANING MANY DIFFERENT THINGS TO MANY different people, the term smart grid has become a common part of our vocabulary, referring to the con- vergence of communication and power system technologies, particularly in the presence of widespread distributed energy resources. However, the smart grid is only the first step in mod- ernizing our electrical infrastructure—once we have communica- tions and distributed capabilities, we need a means to engage and control diverse utility-owned and third-party assets in a sustainable and reliable manner. Transactive energy is a means to accomplish this, using value as a common language to com- bine economic and control techniques and to align value streams for all parties by incenting actively managed systems that can align their behavior with the needs of the rest of the system. Note that value is commonly expressed in dollars and cents but is not limited to money; reliability and emissions are two common value streams that are not currently expressed in monetary terms but nonetheless have value. This exciting area has the potential to engage highly flexible resources, such as buildings, energy storage, and distributed generation, in a scalable system that improves system efficiency and robustness. In this special issue, we are excited to have contributors from multiple backgrounds working on different parts of a common problem. Before we attempt to deploy a transactive energy system, we must understand how the system behaves in both ideal and adverse conditions, and the system must be tested to veri- fy that it operates as intended. A powerful method for evaluat- ing these systems is through the deployment of advanced simulators combined with laboratory-scale hardware-in-the- loop. Our first article “Transactive Home Energy Management Systems,” by Annabelle Pratt, Dheepak Krishnamurthy, Mark By Ron Melton and Jason Fuller Transactive Energy: Envisioning the Future W Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MELE.2016.2614180 EDITORIAL BOARD Iqbal Husain Editor-in-Chief North Carolina State University North Carolina, USA ihusain2@ncsu.edu Tamas Ruzsanyi Editor, Electric Trains Ganz-Skoda Hungary tamas.ruzsanyi@ieee.org Eduardo Pilo de la Fuente Editor, Electric Trains EPRail Research and Consulting Spain eduardo.pilo@eprail.com Jose Conrado Martinez Editor, Electric Trains Directcion de Estrategia y Desarrollo Spain jcmartinez@adif.es Suryanarayana Doolla Editor, Microgrid Indian Institute of Technol- ogy Bombay India suryad@iitb.ac.in Mohammad Shahidehpour Editor, Microgrid Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago, USA ms@iit.edu Steve Pullins Editor, Microgrid GridIntellect Tennessee, USA steve@gridintellect.com Antonello Monti Editor, Microgrid RWTH Aachen Germany amonti@eonerc. rwth-aachen.de Marta Molinas Editor, Electric Ships Norwegian University of Science and Technology Norway marta.molinas@ntnu.no Herb Ginn Editor, Electric Ships Universitiy of South Carolina South Carolina, USA ginnhl@cec.sc.edu Robert Cuzner Editor, Electric Ships University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Wisconsin, USA Cuzner@uwm.edu Khwaja Rahman Editor, Electric Vehicles General Motors Michigan, USA khwaja.rahman@gm.com Chris Searles Editor, Electric Vehicles BAE Batteries Wisconsin, USA Chris.Searles@baebatter- iesusa.com Silva Hiti Editor, Electric Vehicles Faraday Future California, USA silva.hiti@ff.com Eduard Muljadi Editor, Electric Vehicles NREL: Wind Research Colorado, USA eduard.muljadi@nrel.gov Syed A. Hossain Editor, Electric Planes GE Aerospace Ohio, USA syed.hossain@ge.com Kaushik Rajashekara Editor, Electric Planes University of Houston Texas, USA ksraja@central.uh.edu Babak Nahid-Mobarakeh Editor, Electric Planes University of Lorraine France Babak.nahid@ieee.org Bulent Sarlioglu Editor, Electric Planes University of Wisconsin-Madison Wisconsin, USA bulent@engr.wisc.edu IEEE PERIODICALS MAGAZINES DEPART- MENT 445 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08854 USA Debby Nowicki Managing Editor Geri Krolin-Taylor Senior Managing Editor Janet Dudar Senior Art Director Gail A. Schnitzer, Mark Morrissey Associate Art Directors Theresa L. Smith Production Coordinator Felicia Spagnoli Advertising Production Manager Peter M. Tuohy Production Director Dawn Melley Editorial Director Fran Zappulla Staff Director, Publishing Operations ADVERTISING SALES Erik Henson Naylor Association Solutions Tel: +1 352 333 3443 Fax: +1 352 331 3525 ehenson@naylor.com Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MELE.2016.2614198 Date of publication: 5 December 2016