Abstract
This paper addresses the problem of Volt-Var optimization for conservation voltage reduction (CVR) implementation in medium voltage electric distribution systems (EDS) with high penetration levels of renewable energy sources (RES)-based distributed generation (DG). The proposed strategy seeks to coordinate the power dispatch of aggregated electric vehicles (EVs) for EDS voltage control taking into account technical characteristics and the driving patterns of individual EVs. The strategy is for the day-ahead operation scheduling, where decisions are made based on predictions of RES-based DG power production, conventional load consumption and EV driving patterns. Forecast errors are taken into account through a two-stage stochastic programming formulation, where probability density functions are used to describe the uncertainties of predicted parameters. Simulations were carried out on a 33-bus test system and results showed energy savings of up to 3% when EVs participate in voltage control.

Abstract
Demand response (DR) programs can offer various benefits especially in microgrid environments with renewable energy systems (RESs) and energy storage technologies when effectively planned and managed. Accordingly, this study proposes an energy management approach for a neighborhood including residential end-users with photovoltaic (PV) systems, a shared energy storage system (ESS) and an electric vehicle (EV) fleet. The proposed approach presents a novel energy credit mechanism (ECM) for the EV fleet and households separately to exploit the EV batteries and store the excess PV energy in the neighborhood through the shared ESS for later use. End-users gain energy credits before a DR event and use these credits during the peak periods to minimize their total energy cost (TEC), resulted in a decrease in the peak demand. Also, the energy credits gained by the EV fleet are used through the vehicle-to-home (V2H) and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) services with the same objective. In order to conduct a more realistic analysis, a battery degradation cost estimation model is employed and the uncertain behavior of the EV users is considered. The case studies show that the proposed optimization strategy has the capability of considerably reducing the energy costs and peak demand.

Abstract
This paper investigates prosumers' flexibility provision for the optimal operation of active distribution networks in a transactive energy (TE) market. From a prosumer point of view, flexibility can be provided to operators using renewable energy resources (RES) and demand response (DR) through home appliances with the ability to modify their consumption profiles. In the TE market model, the distribution system operator (DSO) is responsible for market-clearing mechanisms and controlling the net power exchange between the distribution network and the upstream grid. The contribution of this work is the enhancement of a strategy to reduce operational costs of an active distribution network by using prosumers' flexibility provision through an aggregator or a smart building coordinator. To this end, a TE market for both energy and flexibility trading at distribution networks is presented, demonstrating the possibility to fulfill DSO requirements through the flexibility contributions in the day-ahead (DA) and real-time (RT) markets.

Abstract
This paper presents a novel scenario-based stochastic mixed-integer second-order cone programming model to solve the problem of optimal reconfiguration of distribution systems with renewable energy sources considering short-circuit constraints. The proposed formulation minimizes technical losses by modifying the statuses of sectionalizing and tie switches, allowing the operation of distribution networks with radial and closed-loop topologies. Since the formation of loops could impact fault current levels, short-circuit constraints are considered in the problem formulation. Numerical experiments are carried out using an 84-node system and the results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed formulation to reduce technical losses notably when a closed-loop operation is allowed. Additionally, it is verified that short-circuit constraints prevent the adoption of network configurations with high short-circuit values.

Abstract
Solar irradiance forecasting is a major priority for the power transmission systems in order to generate and incorporate the performance of massive photovoltaic plants efficiently. As such, prior forecasting techniques that use classical modelling and single deep learning models that undertake feature extraction procedures manually were unable to meet the output demands in specific situations with dynamic variability. Therefore, in this study, we propose an efficient novel hybrid solar irradiance forecasting model based on three steps. In the first step, we employ a powerful variable input selection strategy named as partial mutual information (PMI) to calculate the linear and non-linear correlations of the original solar irradiance data. In the second step, unlike the traditional deep learning models designing their architectures manually, we utilize several deep long short term memory-convolutional neural network (LSTM-CNN) models optimized by a novel modified whale optimization algorithm in order to compute the forecasting results of the solar irradiance datasets. Finally, in the third step, we deploy a deep reinforcement learning strategy for selecting the best subset of the combined deep optimized LSTM-CNN models. Through analysing the forecasting results over two real-world datasets gathered from the USA solar irradiance stations, it can be inferred that our proposed algorithm outperforms other powerful benchmarked algorithms in 1-step, 2-step, 12-step, and 24-step ahead forecasting.

Abstract
This paper proposes an accurate and efficient probabilistic method for modeling the nonlinear and complex uncertainty effects and mainly focuses on the Electric Vehicle (EV) uncertainty in Peer-to-Peer (P2P) trading. The proposed method captures the uncertainty of the input parameters with a low computational burden and regardless of the probability density function (PDF) shape. To this end, for each uncertain parameter, multitude of random vectors with the specification of corresponding uncertain parameters are generated and a fuzzy membership function is then assigned to each vector. Since the most probable samples occur repeatedly, they are recognized by the superposition of the generated fuzzy membership functions. The simulation results on various case studies indicate the high accuracy of the proposed method in comparison with Monte-Carlo simulation (MCs), Unscented Transformation (UT), and Point Estimate Method (PEM). It also scales down the computational burden compared to MCs. Also, a real-world case study is employed to examine the ability of the method in capturing the uncertainty of EVs' arrival and departure time. The studies on this case reveal that involving EVs in P2P trading augments the amount of energy traded within the prosumers.