Welcome from the IEEE PES ISGT Europe 2020 General Chairs

Welcome from the IEEE PES ISGT Europe 2020 Program Chairs  First of all, we would like to thank all authors for contributing so actively to the research presented at this conference. The quality of the ISGT-Europe 2020 program is primarily the result of your own work as an author! ISGT-Europe is a highly recognized annual conference spanning several fields with an exceptional balance between the theory and applications of smart grid technologies.  We also want to offer a special thank to the organizers of panel sessions who play a key role in highlighting special topics of importance and inspiring new research directions in a coherent manner. A total of 334 papers were submitted this year, out of which 246 papers were accepted. The program features 8 panel sessions, three keynote presentations, and 41 regular sessions forming 7 parallel tracks over three days. Regular sessions are organized this year in an interactive online fashion due to the virtual format of the conference. While the online format certainly presents limitations to the most valuable aspect of the conference: in-person interaction among participants, we hope that the online sessions will give rise to interesting discussions and interactions even in a virtual environment. Afterall, this new format has been the norm for most meetings in research, academia, and industry during the past 6 months.  Authors of contributed papers in the conference program come from 47 different countries, spread over five continents, with 32% having an affiliation outside Europe. This makes ISGT-Europe 2020 a truly international event with global representation! It was a great pleasure to work with an outstanding International Program Committee, who volunteered and worked hard so many hours during the Spring period auditing all papers and reviews. Their timely actions were essential to manage the submissions, make acceptance decisions, and assemble the conference program. Our numerous reviewers also must be thanked as well as they ultimately ensure the quality and fairness in the selection of papers.  Finally, we would like to thank Yilin Huang for organizing the online social program, Joep van der Weijden for helping to finalize the panel sessions and the conference website, and the people at QiqoChat (Lucas Cioffi, Joey Isip) for their constant and creative support in setting up the online conference platform and enabling the virtual program format. We hope that you will all find this year's ISGT-Europe program rich, attractive, and inspiring. We wish you a productive and enjoyable 2020 IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Europe conference!