The urgent need to decarbonize energy systems gives rise to many challenging areas of interdisciplinary research, bringing together mathematicians, physicists, engineers and economists. Renewable generation, especially wind and solar, is inherently highly variable and difficult to predict. The need to keep power and energy systems balanced on a second-by-second basis gives rise to problems of control and optimization, together with those of the management of liberalized energy markets. On the longer time scales of planning and investment, there are problems of physical and economic design. The papers in the present issue are written by some of the participants in a programme on the mathematics of energy systems which took place at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge from January to May 2019—see http://www.newton.ac.uk/event/mes.

This article is part of the theme issue ‘The mathematics of energy systems’.

对能源系统脱碳的迫切需求催生了许多具有挑战性的跨学科研究领域，将数学家、物理学家、工程师和经济学家聚集在一起。可再生能源，尤其是风能和太阳能，本质上是高度可变且难以预测的。在逐秒的基础上保持电力和能源系统平衡的需要引起了控制和优化问题，以及自由化能源市场的管理问题。在规划和投资的较长时间尺度上，存在物理和经济设计的问题。本期的论文是由 2019 年 1 月至 5 月在剑桥艾萨克牛顿数学科学研究所举办的能源系统数学项目的一些参与者撰写的——见 http://www.newton。交流

这篇文章是主题问题“能量系统的数学”的一部分。