Facilitating Smart Grids Integration through a Hybrid Multi-Model Co-Simulation Framework

Smart Grid integration plays a crucial role in transitioning towards a climate-neutral future by enabling advanced monitoring, management, and control of renewable energy sources, energy systems, and networks. However, several barriers hinder the integration of these innovative resources and strategies into current power systems due to the inherent complexity of heterogeneous technologies, entities, and actors. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a hybrid multi-model co-simulation infrastructure to analyze innovative Smart Grid scenarios. This infrastructure enables the interconnection of heterogeneous software simulators with real-time hardware simulators within a shared and distributed co-simulation environment, facilitating Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) applications. The capabilities and performance of the proposed infrastructure are evaluated using a smart grid scenario focused on implementing a distribution voltage regulation service delivered by distributed resources installed on a building premise. Additionally, the scenario incorporates a physical smart meter device interconnected in HIL with the simulated building energy management system. The scenario results demonstrate the promising performance and low co-simulation latencies of the proposed infrastructure in coupling software and hardware simulators with HIL applications. Overall, the proposed infrastructure has the potential to assist researchers, system operators, and energy stakeholders in evaluating Smart Grid scenarios and designing, developing, and testing new systems, technologies, and business models.