The CIGRE SC D2 focus group on Distributed Energy Resources (DER), established in September 2025 and participated by Giovanna Dondossola, Project Manager of RSE Transmission and Distribution Technologies Department, has examined what this shift means for information systems, telecommunications, and cybersecurity in an article published in the journals  CIGRE ELECTRA and CIGRE Science and Engineering , titled “Resilience at the Edge: DER Integration Challenges for Information Systems, Telecommunications, and Cybersecurity”.

Drawing on contributions from twelve countries, the central observation is that progress in any one of these three areas now depends on the other two, and that the integration paths different regions are taking are diverging.

In terms of standardization and cybersecurity Italy is dominating the scene with the adoption of a plant central controller (CCI of CEI 0-16) that must be installed mandatorily for exchanging measurements with the DSO every four seconds, at the point of connection to medium voltage grids of production plants with power capacity equal or greater 1 MW.

To the CCI CEI 0-16 requires IEC 62351-protected IEC 61850 communications and IEC 62443 certifications. The integration paths different regions have chosen, ranging from hardware mandated conformity at the edge, to software-based aggregation in the cloud, from sovereign telecoms to public networks, and from regulation-imposed cybersecurity to voluntary adoption, reflect real differences in market structure and risk appetite of integrating DERs into the grid. Opportunities exist to review and learn from each region to consolidate best practices and experiences.

The focus group has identified further work in semantic interoperability, resilient telecommunications for black start, aggregator governance, Zero Trust in OT, coordinated-attack detection, and regulatory approaches.

A workshop titled “Challenges and recommendations for DER integration to the grid from the perspective of information exchange, cybersecurity and telecommunications” will be held on 26 august 2026 during upcoming CIGRE Paris 2026 conference, where we look forward to further discussions with our international community on this important topic.