On October 29th 2015, in Ispra, at the inauguration of the European Interoperability Centre for Electric Vehicles and Smart Grids, a demo of the real‐time integrated co‐simulation platform has been presented.
The demo sets the path towards the set‐up of a federation of EU labs, located in different member states, with at least a node in each EU country, allowing for a cost‐effective sharing of HW and SW facilities at EU level in the smart electricity sector.
The federation of labs is created through real‐time remote access to high‐performance computing, data infrastructure and hardware and software components (electrical, electronic, ICT) assured by the interconnection of different labs with a server‐cloud architecture. The local computers or machines interact with other labs through a dedicated VPN (Virtual Private Network) over the GEANT network (the pan‐European research and education network that interconnects Europe’s National Research and Education Networks). The local VPN servers bridge the local simulation platform at each site and the cloud ensuring the security of the data exchange while offering a better coordination of the communication and the multi‐point connection.
It is possible in this way the integration of the different sub‐systems (distribution grid, transmission grid, generation, market and consumer behaviour) with an holistic approach.
For the demo in Ispra we tested the Real‐Time Co‐simulation of the interoperation of a transmission and distribution system for different levels of distributed generation and EV penetration into the grid and under different weather conditions with modelling of typical consumer behavior:
- A model of the transmission system of Piedmont Region (IT) at 220‐380 kV (around 90 buses and 110 lines) has been implemented on RTDS real time simulator in Aachen @ RWTH.
- A portion of the distribution network in Turin (50 buses, 49 lines, representing 742 mono‐phase and 8293 three phase LV customers + 6 MV customers + 4 PV generators) has been implemented on Opal‐RT @PoliTO.
- The behaviour of the prosumers on the distribution grid is captured via a dedicated model of consumer/prosumer behaviour in a third lab (Petten, Netherlands).
- A monitoring system, in a fourth lab (Ispra, Italy), analyses the data and simulation results through a cloud system.