Tao Xu is currently an associate professor with the School of Electrical and Information Engineering, Tianjin University. China. She received her M.Sc. and Ph.D degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Liverpool and the University of Plymouth, UK in 2003 and 2007, respectively. She then became a Post-Doc researcher in the New and Renewable Energy Group at the University of Durham, UK. She has carried out research which concentrates on the challenges associated with the widespread integration and control of distributed renewables. She has published many papers in smart grids in international leading journals, and has acted as PI in a number of international collaborations on microgrids.