Abstract
Smart grid technology is the next step to the evolution of classical power grids, providing robustness, reliability, and security throughout the network, enabling real-time management and control. To achieve these goals, distributed computing (microgrid concept) and intelligent control algorithms, tailored to the nature and needs of the network under study, are necessary. To deal with the vast diversity of power grids, being able to capture the dynamics of any given network, and create tools for network analysis, apparatus testing, and power grid management, an automatic design framework for real-time power system simulators is needed. In this article, a prototype of this approach is presented, employing Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) platforms due to their reconfigurability that enables low-power, low-latency, and high-performance designs, as a first attempt towards an open source platform, compatible with the majority of hardware design suites. It comprises two major parts: (i) a user-oriented section, built in Matlab/Simulink; and (ii) a hardware-oriented section, written in Matlab and Very High Speed Integrated Circuit (VHSIC)-Hardware Description Language (VHDL) code. To verify its functionality, two test power networks were given in a schematic format, analyzed through Matlab code and turned into dedicated hardware simulators with the aid of the VHDL template. Then, simulation results from Simulink and the prototype were compared for error estimation. The results show the prototype’s successful implementation with minimal resources utilization, high performance and low latency in the order of nanoseconds in Xilinx 6- and 7-series FPGAs, therefore proving its modularity and efficient use in many different scenarios, meeting low-latency/real-time requirements while enabling further smart grid research.
Highlights
Smart grid is a term used to describe the classical power grid enhanced with “intelligence” [1], in the sense that a logical layer is placed on top of the physical system, controlling its operation in real-time
The ongoing research regarding smart grid technology faces many challenges of different difficulty levels and nature. This is due to the multidimensionality of the smart grid problem, which requires the combination of knowledge from different fields, e.g., power systems, communications, information technology, cyber-physical systems, Artificial Intelligence (AI), control theory, and economics
We propose an automatic design framework for real-time power system simulators in the context of microgrid analysis, targeting Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) platforms for their inherent parallelism, needed for achieving high performance and latency in the order of tenths of nanoseconds, and reconfigurability, which provides increased flexibility compared to other alternatives, e.g., General-Purpose Graphics Processing Units (GPGPUs)
Summary
Smart grid is a term used to describe the classical power grid enhanced with “intelligence” [1], in the sense that a logical layer (intelligence) is placed on top of the physical system, controlling its operation in real-time This (logical) layer is composed of many different functional units, such as digital platforms, dedicated software and hardware accelerators which host the system’s logic, as well as from a trusted communication layer. E.g., optimal energy distribution, load balancing, load forecasting, transactive energy market, etc., require real-time monitoring and computing capabilities over the power grid so that system operators, utility companies, as well as consumers can monitor, process, and act upon important system data on-the-fly. It can be inferred that smart grid problems require real-time simulation/monitoring, which facilitates the potential forthcoming needs of such dynamic environments
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