A review on digital twins for power generation and distribution

Abstract

This paper presents a systematic literature review on the application of digital twins in the energy sector. Initially, we generated an overview through a survey of prior reviews, independent of market vertical, then followed by a more detailed review concentrating on the power production and distribution domains, as per the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) smart grid standard. We implemented a rigorous method, which included seven stages, beginning with the collection of 2238 articles. We observed that the energy sector range was too broad and filtered by generation and distribution during the practical screening, resulting in 275 for further screening. This amount was then condensed to 81 papers that matched the quality screening criteria for synthesis and examination. In summary, digital twin architectures and frameworks include five components: the physical entity, bidirectional communication, the virtual entity (with modeling and simulation), data management, and services. Our study contributed by determining that distribution management is the most pertinent application of digital twins in the distribution domain and fault diagnosis in the generation domain. Furthermore, we found that digital twins involve multiple stakeholders whose role is rarely discussed in studies, and we identified a similar absence of emphasis for security. Research on security often presents the digital twin as an additional layer of protection, yet rarely investigates the security of the digital twin by itself. The potential limitations of our study to answer some of the technical research questions may be because of the criteria for the selection of papers. However, as the emphasis of this study is on the energy sector, it enabled domain-specific findings for generation and distribution.