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The ISGAN Smart Grid Wiki builds a shared language around smart grid transitions. It integrates knowledge across ISGAN working groups, grounding concepts in real-world examples and connecting them across disciplines.
What this wiki is for
Smart grid transitions draw on knowledge from engineering, policy, economics, sociology, and other fields. Experts in these fields often use the same terms differently, or different terms for closely related ideas. The ISGAN Wiki addresses this by building a shared language around smart grid transitions. This wiki is meant to be as a living platform that integrates knowledge across ISGAN working groups.
Each topic page approaches a concept from three complementary angles, actors and stakeholders, technologies and infrastructure, and institutional structures, and is informed by their triangulation. Pages are grounded in real-world examples from different regions and connected through links that make their dependencies visible. After publication, pages are revised and updated as knowledge develops.
How the wiki is organised
Topics are grouped into five categories that consider the different scope of work of the ISGAN working groups.
Table 1. Topic categories and what they cover.
| Category | What it covers |
|---|---|
| General Topics | Foundational concepts relevant across the wiki: flexibility, resilience, scenarios, digitalisation, and related cross-cutting themes. |
| Governance, Innovation & Change | How transitions are organised and steered: governance frameworks, innovation policy, regulatory sandboxes, transition pathways, and change processes. |
| Institutions & Markets | The rules and market structures shaping system behaviour: regulation, market design, network codes, tariffs, and energy services. |
| Actors & Stakeholders | The groups whose decisions shape the system: operators, users, aggregators, communities, and their roles. |
| Technology & Infrastructure | The physical and digital infrastructure of smart grids: grid architecture, storage, sector coupling, grid edge, and infrastructure components. |
Each topic sits in one primary category. Related topics in other categories are linked directly from the Related topics section.
Who is this wiki for?
The wiki serves three groups simultaneously. Writing well for all three at once is possible, but it requires deliberate choices.
ISGAN experts across working groups
If you work within ISGAN, the wiki is a space for consolidating what the network knows collectively, including the definitional debates and disciplinary tensions that often stay buried in workshop notes. This audience values precision. Competing definitions should be named, not smoothed over. Technical accuracy is expected.
Policy makers and energy institutions
Energy ministries, regulatory bodies, and international agencies use the wiki to understand the framing of technical and governance debates, and to communicate across departments and to elected politicians. For this audience, jargon needs to be unpacked. Every term that a minister's advisor might not recognise should be explained in plain language on first use.
Researchers across disciplines
Engineers, social scientists, energy economists, and policy researchers use the wiki when writing proposals and when communicating across disciplinary communities. This audience needs the connections between perspectives made explicit. It is not enough to list what each discipline contributes; the page should show how the perspectives inform each other.
Get involved
To contribute, you need a wiki account. Register using the link in the top navigation. Your account will be reviewed by an admin before activation. For questions about contributing or to propose a new topic, contact the WG7 Task Lead.
See the Editorial guide for writing standards and contributor roles, the Wiki markup reference for formatting, and the Topic builder to submit a new topic.