Expected to reliably deliver power whenever and wherever consumers demand it, today’s electrical grids are the largest engineered systems ever built. In recent years these seemingly mundane collections of wires and generators have become the focus of heated societal discussions as the grids of tomorrow are designed and debated. The topics of those discussions are quite interdisciplinary and range from the analysis of large-scale blackouts1 to controls for renewable-energy integration and smart utilization of appliances.2 The debate is understandable because the systems affect almost every aspect of our day-to-day lives.
Today’s grids already exhibit complex nonlinear dynamics; for example, the collective effects of thousands of induction motors found in air conditioners and other small consumer appliances may produce serious malfunctions of sections of grid. Such collective dynamics are not well understood and are likely to become more complex as consumer appliances become more intelligent and autonomous. Today’s grids...
