Distributed Large-Scale Co-Simulation for IoT-Aided Smart Grid Control

An important goal of smart grid is to leverage modern digital communication infrastructure to help control power systems more effectively. As more and more Internet of Things (IoT) devices with measurement and/or control capability are designed and deployed for a more stable and efficient power system, the role of communication network has become more important. To evaluate the performance of control algorithms for inter-dependent power grid and communication network, a test bed that could simulate inter-dependent power grid and communication network is desirable. In this paper, we demonstrate the design and implementation of a novel co-simulator, which would effectively evaluate IoT-aided algorithms for scheduling the jobs of electrical appliances. There are three major features of our co-simulator: 1) large-scale test is achieved by distributed modules that are designed based on a Turing-indistinguishable approach; 2) remote servers or test devices are controlled by local graphical user interface (we only need to configure the simulator on a local server); 3) a software virtual network approach is employed to emulate real networks, which significantly reduces the cost of real-world test beds. To evaluate our co-simulator, two energy consumption scheduling algorithms are implemented. Experimental results show that our co-simulator could effectively evaluate these methods. Thus our co-simulator is a powerful tool for utility companies and policy makers to commission novel IoT devices or methods in future smart grid infrastructure.