Co-simulation framework based on power system, AI and communication tools for evaluating smart grid applications

Abstract

Numerical simulation has become essential tool of the design process and is widely used for the validation and evaluation of smart grid solutions and applications. However, domain specific tools are able to model a system only for a particular domain i.e., electric power system tool can model only power systems and for a intelligent control it has no provision to design AI based decision making algorithms, which can be developed in Multi-agent System tool. Thus for in-depth realistic analysis a co-simulation approach is required for simulating multi-domain systems. This paper presents a framework for co-simulation with the tools from three different domains covering power system, artificial intelligence and communication to simulate and analyse the smart grid applications. DigSILENT PowerFactory, a dedicated power system simulator, is interfaced with JADE (Java Agent Based Environment), an AI tool, using Application Programming Interface (API) through Python script. OMNeT++ was used as a communication simulator. Problem of voltage stabilization in power distribution network was addressed using Multi-Agent System (MAS) based approach for the validation of the proposed framework. Results show that co-simulation approach is effective for the realistic analysis of smartgrid applications.