ICINCO 2010The electrical system is undergoing a profound change of state, which will lead to what is being called the smart grid. The necessity of a complex system approach to cope with ongoing changes is presented: combining a systemic approach based on complexity science with the classical views of electrical grids is important for an understanding the behavior of the future grid. Key issues like different layers and inter-layer devices, as well as subsystems are discussed and proposed as a base to create an agent-based system model to run simulations
