This book focuses on market/regulatory issues concerning smart grid applications, business cases and use cases. It covers the most relevant aspects of the smart grid-design considerations, economics, legal aspects and system management-and includes exercises at the end of each chapter. Since renewable energy generation is weather-dependent, it is more volatile, which affects market prices and the need for flexibility options including demand side management. In order to balance supply and demand in a sustainable manner also with high shares of renewables, energy systems need to be enhanced by smart grid technologies. This co-evolutionary transformation of the energy system, economic, societal, political and regulatory domains is challenging and calls for an integrated and interdisciplinary approach. This book provides an essential basis to prepare lecturers and students for engaging in the new energy world.

This book contains a selection of refereed papers presented at the "International Conference on Operations Research (OR 2014)", which took place at RWTH Aachen University, Germany, September 2-5, 2014. More than 800 scientists and students from 47 countries attended OR 2014 and presented more than 500 papers in parallel topical streams, as well as special award sessions. The theme of the conference and its proceedings is "Business Analytics and Optimization".