The old electricity network infrastructure has proven to be inadequate, with respect to modern challenges such as alternative energy sources, electricity demand and energy saving policies. Moreover, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) seem to have reached an adequate level of reliability and flexibility in order to support a new concept of electricity network-the smart grid. In this work, we will analyse the state-of-the-art of smart grids, in their technical, management, security, and optimization aspects. We will also provide a brief overview of the regulatory aspects involved in the development of a smart grid, mainly from the viewpoint of the European Union.

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Green IT has become one of the most discussed topics in the last new years. However, the related literature is dispersed and it is difficult to give precise definitions. Nowadays saving energy is an interesting and interdisciplinary key challenge. Hardware manufacturers and designers have usually handled the problem, in the field of IT, but recently software energy efficiency gathered the interest of industry and academic research. However, writing energy efficient software requires proper metrics to evaluate it. In the literature it is possible to find metrics related to several aspects of software evaluation such as complexity, performance, maintainability, reliability, and so on but there is still a gap for energy related metrics. In this paper we:-Introduce a taxonomy of concepts related to energy and IT;-Present the most recent data on energy consumption trends organized according to the taxonomy;-Present some guidelines to write energy efficient software organized according to the taxonomy. Our contribution is twofold:-Provide available information in a better organized way;-Underline what is missing and what can be done to make the context clearer as well.

Developers who aim to write energy-efficient software require both a new mindset and models and tools that can measure and reduce the software effect on hardware energy consumption. The authors' conceptual framework provides a unifying view of strategies, models, and tools. IT energy consumption is an increasingly relevant concern. Traditionally, only hardware designers dealt with energy consumption. However, as hardware became more powerful, the influence of software behavior on energy consumption grew significantly.During the last few years, we have explored several facets of IT energy consumption from a software engineering perspective. What was once purely anecdotal evidence about the pivotal role of software on energy consumption is now supported by sound empirical data we collected through a series of experiments on different hardware platforms: servers, desktop PCs, and mobile phones. We analyzed the power consumption of three servers performing different tasks, and we observed that power consumption can increase up to 40 percent depending on the usage scenario. 1 We analyzed desktop computers from different technological generations in distinct software usage scenarios and found out that, depending on the software applications used, power consumption can increase up to 20 percent. 2 Finally, we profiled the power consumption of mobile devices, comparing two generations of Android OS-based smartphones. Our results show how different execution profiles of the same application can significantly affect the power consumption of a mobile device. 3 Although the actual figures vary depending on the specific hardware platform, the impact of software on energy consumption is definitely relevant. This implies a change of mindset for the software engineering community. First,