ADVANCED REVIEW Integration of renewable energy systems and challenges for dynamics, control, and automation of electrical power systems Amirhossein Sajadi 1 | Luka Strezoski 1,2 | Vladimir Strezoski 2,3 | Marija Prica 1 | Kenneth A. Loparo 1 1 Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio 2 Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad, Novi Sad, Serbia 3 Schneider Electric DMS Novi Sad, Novi Sad, Serbia Correspondence Amirhossein Sajadi, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA. Email: axs1026@case.edu This paper tackles the key challenges for dynamics, control, and automation of power systems that are imposed by the integration of renewable power plants. First, the current practice of automation and control in large-scale power systems are reviewed. Then, dynamics and control of electrical transmission systems are dis- cussed and the issues associated with the integration of large-scale wind and solar power plants are exploited. The discussion carries on with a focus on control of electrical distribution systems and the key issues associated with the integration of distributed generation power plants. An emerging concern in power and energy industry is the dynamic interaction between transmission and distribution systems as a result of technological and topological changes in power systems that can put their control at risk. These topics are also covered in this paper. In terms of automa- tion, the key challenges and opportunities for accommodation of higher penetration and share of renewable energy, as part of the vision for grid modernization, are explored in this paper. Throughout the discussion, some results from the recent studies are shown. This article is categorized under: Energy Infrastructure > Systems and Infrastructure KEYWORDS automation, control, dynamics, power systems, renewable energy, stability 1 | INTRODUCTION Power systems are compounded of hundreds of thousands of controllable and noncontrollable components that function in a variety of ways (Machowski, Bialek, & Bumby, 1997). Hence, this complex process requires a superb automation to sustain the power delivery. In current power systems, energy management system (EMS) and distribution management system (DMS) represent the highest level of automation at transmission and distribution systems, respectively. These automation sys- tems include the supervisory control and data acquisition systems and a set of real-time and off-line power system applica- tions. The automation and control of traditional power systems with centralized dispatchable power plants and also the stability related issues have been extensively studied and discussed in the literature, including the studies by Anderson (1995), Anderson and Fouad (2003), Glover, Sarma, and Overbye (2011), Gutman (1988), Kersting (2012), Kundur, Balu, and Lauby (1994), Machwoski, Bialek, and Bumby (1997, 2008), Sauer and Pai (1998), and many more. In the recent years, due to the environmental issues as well as gas and oil price fluctuations around the globe, deployment of renewable power plants, such as solar and wind, has become more popular (Sajadi, Farag, Biczel, & El-Saadany, 2012). These power plants could be integrated into the power systems through transmission and distribution systems, depending on their generation capacity. The renewable power plants that are large-scale wind and solar power plants in scales of hundreds to thousands of megawatts (MW) are integrated through the transmission system. Whereas the renewable power plants that Received: 26 February 2018 Revised: 29 May 2018 Accepted: 28 June 2018 DOI: 10.1002/wene.321 WIREs Energy Environ. 2019;8:e321. wires.wiley.com/energy © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 1 of 14 https://doi.org/10.1002/wene.321