Advancing Clean Energy Transition:

The role of Distribution Grid and DC solutions for the Modernization

At the 16th Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM16) in Busan, Republic of Korea, ISGAN will host a side event titled “The Role of Distribution Grids and DC Solutions for Modernisation.”

This special session will be co-hosted with Korea’s national utility, KEPCO (Korea Electric Power Corporation), highlighting collaborative approaches to advancing modern power systems and accelerating the clean energy transition.

This side event will provide high-level policymakers, regulators, and private sector leaders with critical insights into the important role and necessary evolution of distribution grids, and how DC technology can help accelerate clean energy deployment and drive power sector transformation.

More specifically, this side event will:

• Bring together high-level policymakers, regulators, private sector leaders, and international experts to explore how DC distribution can support the clean energy transition and modernize power systems.
• Feature presentations from private sector leaders and academic experts, sharing strategies, policies, and case studies that highlight the deployment and benefits of DC distribution.
• Provide a platform for knowledge exchange, fostering dialogue between policymakers and industry leaders. The discussion will highlight the role of DC distribution in industry decarbonisation, improved energy efficiency, and meeting the rising demand for digital energy applications.
• Offer participants insights into best practices and opportunities for international cooperation, in direct support of CEM16’s priorities on Industry Decarbonisation and Power Sector Transformation.

Join us to explore the key topics that will be discussed during the event, and stay tuned for highlights from the session.

The 11th Annual ISGAN Awards Ceremony & 2025 CEM H2I & IEA Hydrogen TCP Awards of Excellence 

This year, ISGAN and the Hydrogen TCP will jointly host their awards ceremony at the 16th Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM16) in Busan, Republic of Korea.

This joint side event brings together the ISGAN and Hydrogen TCP Awards of Excellence, highlighting their shared commitment to accelerating the energy transition through innovation and international collaboration.

The ISGAN Awards of Excellence honour impactful and scalable smart grid initiatives that aim to demonstrate enhanced flexibility, resilience, and efficiency in power systems. By recognising replicable projects worldwide, the awards facilitate peer learning and foster collaboration among policymakers, industry, and experts. 11th ISGAN Awards honour global smart grid excellence under the theme “Solutions for Enhanced Grid Operations”. The awards ceremony showcases scalable innovations and connects policymakers and industry leaders to advance smarter, more flexible, and resilient power systems through international collaboration.

The Hydrogen TCP Awards of Excellence celebrate breakthrough achievements in hydrogen technologies, aligning with CEM priorities by recognising innovations that are essential for the decarbonisation of industry, transport, and energy systems. These awards serve to raise visibility, promote knowledge exchange, and encourage the adoption of best practices within and beyond the hydrogen sector.

Together, these awards demonstrate how multilateral cooperation and targeted recognition can accelerate technological deployment, strengthen policy coordination, and advance shared clean energy goals. The event will offer high-level visibility for the awardees and actionable insights for the broader CEM community.

Stay tuned for more details on the award recipients and event highlights.

Foresight and strategic intelligence play crucial roles in the long-term strategic planning of future resilient distribution grids, particularly in uncertain and complex environments like those related to the energy transition and climate change mitigation and adaptation.

This phase is critical for ensuring that strategic decisions and plans are based on robust and actionable information, even if accurate predictions of future requirements for grids cannot be made.

The essence of making informed decisions and deploying effective steering mechanisms in distribution grid planning is in the centre of discussion for ISGAN Lighthouse Webinars organised on September 10 and October 1, 2025.

The speakers

	Klaus Kubeczko Senior Expert Advisor at AIT Austria
	Julio Braslavsky Senior Principal Research Scientist at CSIRO Australia
	Prathaban Moodley General Manager: Applied Energy R&D and Innovation at South African National Energy Development Institute (SANEDI) South Africa
	Branislav Iglar Research Engineer Integrated Energy Systems Center for Energy at AIT Austria
	Terijo Lovasz Project Officer at CSIRO Australia

Intended audience

Policy makers, regulators, energy agencies, distribution system operators and utilities, public and private grd infrastructure owners, researchers.

Further reading:

• ISGAN Policy Brief On Long-Term Planning and Implementation of Smart Distribution Grids
• Lighthouse Project on Smart Distribution Grids

This year’s report emphasizes ISGAN’s ongoing commitment to accelerating the global energy transition through smarter, more flexible, and resilient electricity systems. It highlights the network’s role in fostering knowledge exchange, supporting policy frameworks, and promoting best practices across its diverse member base.

A central focus of the 2024 report is the continued development of ISGAN’s flagship initiative, the Lighthouse Project. Now entering its second phase, the project centers on long-term planning and implementation of smart distribution grids under uncertainty. Key outputs include a widely recognized Policy Brief, the launch of the ISGAN Knowledge Hub, and a global series of workshops engaging stakeholders from 20 countries.

The report also documents major events such as the ExCo27 meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, the ExCo28 meeting in Incheon, Republic of Korea, and the ISGAN Awards, as well as the network’s active participation in the 15th Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM15) and 9th Mission Innovation (MI-9) meetings. These gatherings provided opportunities to showcase ISGAN’s contributions to the global “Agenda for Action on Power Systems Solutions”.

In addition, the report features updates from ISGAN’s six Working Groups, each contributing to key themes such as flexibility, digitalization, interoperability, and resilience. It also includes a summary of the Virtual Learning webinars and a comprehensive list of publications released throughout the year.

The electricity system is transforming due to renewable energy integration, decentralized generation, and digitalization. The traditional unidirectional grid is evolving into a dynamic, bidirectional system with distributed energy resources (DERs) like solar, wind, EVs, and storage. This shift, along with electrification and decarbonization goals, requires enhanced coordination to maintain reliability and efficiency.

By gathering experience and insights gained from global pilot projects in the field of providing flexibility for coordinated capacity management of transmission and distribution system operators, a holistic overview of the ongoing developments in the integration of flexibility can be presented.

The overall study highlights that improved TSO-DSO-stakeholder coordination significantly enhances grid stability and efficiency.

Key findings include the need for:

• Enhanced TSO-DSO coordination
• Investment in advanced grid technologies
• Improved market mechanisms for flexibility
• Clear regulatory frameworks
• Stakeholder engagement
• Continuous knowledge exchange

Join us for a webinar with José Villar (INESC-TEC, Portugal) on managing collective self-consumption and local flexibility using the RECreation platform.

The RECreation platform started with the national Portuguese project DigitalCER, and has been enhanced with flexibility markets support in the BeFlexible project, where it is also being integrated into the GDBN, a digital platform to support the flexibility energy-centric value chain (topic of a future webinar) and into SAP store and ecosystems.

In this webinar, we will explore key concepts such as self-consumption, sharing mechanisms, and allocation coefficients, as well as the structure and operation of Renewable Energy Communities (RECs). The session will cover local energy markets, pricing mechanisms, transaction management, and settlement processes. Additionally, we will discuss how RECreation can support the participation of REC in flexibility markets.

A live demonstration or illustrative slides of the RECreation platform will highlight its key functionalities and practical applications. Don’t miss this opportunity to delve into innovative energy solutions.

The speaker

José Villar Centre for Energy Systems INESC TEC

Intended audience

Energy professionals, Engineers, Researchers, Academics, Policy makers, Regulators, Utility companies, Distribution System Operators (DSOs), Project managers, EU project stakeholders, Renewable Energy Community (REC) members, Energy community promoters, Technology developers.

Key messages

• Collective self-consumption integrates final consumers into the energy markets and helps to integrate renewable generation, reduces reliance on external supply and improves local energy balance.
• The RECreation platform enables efficient management of collective self-consumption through transparent sharing mechanisms and allocation coefficients.
• RECreation provides practical tools for transactions, settlement, and integration with DSOs.
• Local energy markets and pricing models are essential for empowering Renewable Energy Communities (RECs).
• RECreation provides support for flexibility markets, which can enhance the operational and economic performance of RECs.

Further reading:

• BeFlexible – Framework for Flexibility-Centric Energy
  https://beflexible.eu/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/BeFlexible-D1.2-Framework-for-Flexibility-Centric-Energy.pdf

• Impact of different regulatory approaches in Renewable Energy Communities: A quantitative comparison of European implementations
  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2024.114399

• Decarbonized and inclusive energy: a two-fold strategy for Renewable Energy Communities
  https://doi.org/10.1109/MPE.2024.3396442

• Integrating flexibility and energy local markets with wholesale balancing responsibilities in the context of renewable energy communities
  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2023.128853

• A Three-Stage Model to Manage Energy Communities, Share Benefits and Provide Local Grid Services
  https://doi.org/10.3390/en16031143

• Towards Future Smart Power Systems with High Penetration of Renewables (Elsevier, 1st Edition), Chapter 6: Self-consumption and energy communities
  978-0-443-29871-4
  

The paper discusses three key topics in detail:

• Market-Based Flexibility Procurement by DSOs
• Supporting Grid Tools for Active System Management
• Applicability of Flexibility Mechanisms and their trade-off with Investments

The discussion paper raised several challenges and proposed different solutions to overcome these challenges.

Illustration of the main challenges for market-based flexibility procurement by DSOs considering the participation of demand-side flexibility

Overall, the paper concludes that the challenge of integrating flexibility in the DSO sphere is complex, necessitating additional guidance and research on how to correctly trade-off between different flexibility mechanisms and grid investments.